July 23, 2004

• I can't remember a time when a President of the United States was so deeply despised by so many people. You always have a lunatic fringe, the Michael Moores and the Rush Limbaughs of the world, but in this case the fringe is a lot bigger and a lot more vocal. I think it all goes back to the 2000 election. The President was elected without a majority of the popular vote—hardly an unprecedented event, but one that made a lot of people unhappy. But I don't really know. I just know it's really getting me down.
• You have to admit he's great material!
• Wolof - yes, but living with "great material" is very disconcerting, and tiring, and frightening.
• Whats really frightening is that only about 1/2 the population finds it funny.
• Let's ask Google! ["Richard Nixon" jokes]=about 37,900 ["Gerald Ford" jokes]=about 14,200 ["Jimmy Carter" jokes]=about 40,500 ["Ronald Reagan" jokes]=about 169,000 ["Bill Clinton" jokes]=about 346,000 (Since there have been 2 Bush presidencies, that makes it a bit more tricky...) ["George H. W. Bush" jokes]=about 12,000 ["George W. Bush" jokes]=about 336,000 and ["George Bush" jokes]=about 201,000 and a few more since I'm on a roll... ["Dick Cheney" jokes]=about 70,200 ["John Kerry" jokes]=about 195,000 ["John Edwards" jokes]=about 56,200 So, W is about tied with Clinton? I do seem to vaguely remember from my childhood a lot of Carter jokes - peanut farmer, big lips, beer drinking brother (Billy Beer) etc.
• No other President has made me as angry, uneasy and frustrated as W has. Its not only how he gained the Presidency, that bothers me, everything about him bothers me.
• Me, too, bratcat. I was first bothered by the fact that his dad was president before him. Then I was bothered by the 2000 election; because he won due to "mistakes" in his brother's state's election. On a daily basis since then, though, I've been bothered a great deal by his smirk. His never-ending, holier-than-thou, vomit inducing smirk.
• I consider myself a pacifit, a lover not a fighter, etc. If I were left alone in a room with Dubya, I think I would be willing to take the prison time. Only 14,200 Ford jokes? Are they not counting Chevy Chase?
• yes the god-awful smirk....and the non-answers....the shadiness of it all.
• Ever since he became POTUS, I've always wondered how history will compare him and his dad against the other father and son Presidential pair. (It's whitehouse.gov, I know. But I'm kinda short of time right now. Sorry.)
• You really are short on time... you forgot your "https". We spank people for that 'round these parts. John Adams and John Quincy Adams
• I don't recall who said it, but it seemed so apropos... "He was born on 3rd and thinks he hit a triple." It's the smug sense of entitlement and sanctimonious certainty that he knows what's best and even if he doesn't, it doesn't matter because no one can touch him. If he had been born George Johnson, a regular guy, he'd be trying to sell you a crappy time share on South Padre. If it hadn't been for 9/11 he'd be an even bigger joke.
• Dubya may tied with Clinton, but Clinton served 2 terms! The Google analysis is a bit flawed, I think you are much more likely to find Dubya jokes on the web than, say Nixon jokes or Reagan jokes (or even Clinton jokes), since they are more current.People wouldn't bother to post a Nixon joke, for instance, because so many people wouldn't get it. For that matter, many of the people posting to the web wouldn't get it (I suspect the average mean age for a weblog/message board poster is somewhere around 25 years old.) There is also a lot more media nowadays. In the 1970's, we had 3 TV networks and a couple of talk shows. Now we have 6 networks and dozens of cable channels, many with talk shows, and many, many more talk radio shows. I think jokes about all Presidents have always been standard fare in the popular Zeitgeist. I remember a lot of Reagan jokes when I was young. Some of it also has to do with the source material. You don't hear too many Ford jokes, but how many jokes can you tell about someone being a klutz (about the only thing Ford is known for.)
• I miss that Comedy Central show "That's my Bush".
• Joking about Bush is about all we have left, because anything else will get you accused of "supporting terror" or "hating America". Having him as President has taken most of the pride out of being an American (for me, anyway). At least I'm still a Texan. Wait, Rick Perry ... Tom DeLay ... damn.
• drivingmenuts -- I forgive you since Texas is also home to John Erickson, who has given the world delightful tales of Hank the Cowdog.
• surlyboi, you're a lifesaver. Thankee! *holds out fratpaddle* not too hard please!
• I thought as much. I can't rememeber people hating Clinton this much during either term (go any farther back and I'm pretty much regulated to hearing about it secondhand...I was alive, but not terribbly concerned with politics.
• Google: George Bush, ass = 606,000 Bill Clinton, ass = 299,000 George Bush, lies= 923,000 Bill Clinton, lies = 601,000 BUSH WINS!!!
• I'm on the wrong side of the Atlantic for this, but I reckon it was far worse for Nixon than anything that's going on now. Probably in Carter's last days, too, though in a less angry, more terminally-depressed kind of way.
• the bush hatred seems more widespread across various groups than the clinton hatred, which was very much rooted within the right wing -- thus, the "right wing conspiracy." hillary hit it right on the head with that one. we have an interesting dynamic in my family. my dad and brother were both big bush supporters in 2000. since then, my dad has come to vehemently hate him (lots of capital letters and exclamation points in his emails. ha!) but my brother has come to admire bush even more. "he doesn't take any bullshit," he says.
• Your brother sounds sexy. Does he have an ass tatt?
• someone who evokes such extreme emotions is destined to be the subject of many jokes (i've even seen some pro-dubya jokes). moreover, as drivingmenuts points out, joking is all that remains, not just because criticism will lead to accusations of anti-americanism, but also because criticisms don't seem to lead anywhere with this teflon-coated administration. the strategy of hinting and implying untruths, rather than going on record with them, has been remarkably successful.
• SideDish, tales of your brother are always confounding and upsetting as a microcosm of that (now) 48% who support this administration in the face of all the scandals. Good luck! to the topic: (a) Clinton's terms saw increased discord as right wing talk radio and Faux news were on the rise. (b) Bush drove it off the cliff by smirking while cramming his religious-right agenda down everyone's throat. "I'm the President, I don't have to explain why I do things", "I don't read the news", "Bush doesn't engage in discussions and occasionally looks like he doesn't knows what's going on"(Paul O'Neil) (c) The usual proliferation-of-new-communications-channels naturally results in more commentary.
• I don't know what it is about GWB, but for whatever reason he makes ordinarily rational people turn into Orwell-quoting paranoids. A good friend of mine, a moderately big wheel in the local Democratic party, reasonably influential therein (he's an exec VP at a PR firm that does a lot of work around here with Democratic canidates for office), with whom I have historically had interesting, lively conversations about history and politics, just absolutely goes off the deep end when discussing Bush. Even yesterday, at lunch, he was declaring that, should there be a second Bush administration, we would see an "American Tianneman Square" in DC, along with a "return to a fascist-feudal state." If a Kerry victory in November would bring a return of some semblence of sanity to these people, I'd vote for him twice. Disagree with the man? No sweat. Hell, I disagree with him on a lot of subjects. But good lord, people talk about this guy like he's Damien Thorn.
• I was living in a conservative stronghold during the Clinton administration (I think I knew every fellow Heathen Liberal in town. There were around four). The anti-Clinton sentiment in certain parts of the South pretty much matched the left's current feelings about Bush. They even held an anti-Clinton rally at one point. I desperately wish I'd gone to see that.
• Get your copy of Blazing Saddles out. Fast forward to the scene where Mel Brookes is playing the governor and there is George W. bush in all his glory. It is absolutely uncanny.
• You kids. People have always joked about presidents (and everybody else in the news), but topical jokes get old faster then leftover pizza, so the crop of LBJ jokes (I have a whole book of them somewhere) is forgotten by the time Nixon resigns. Plus what SixDW said about older stuff not being on the internet. Back in the nineteenth century they were joking even more relentlessly, not having TV and other modern pacifiers to distract them; one of the most famous jabs at a president was 1884's "Ma, ma, where's my pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!" about Cleveland (who had admitted fathering an illegitimate son). Trust me, in five or ten years what we'll remember about Jorge W. Arbusto won't be the jokes.
• Marke my words - in five years, you slaves will tremble before the Pearl Throne of God-King Bush II and offer your children to be sacrificed in his name! Or maybe Kerry. Whatever.
• Now that I think about it I don't know that I've heard very many Bush jokes at all. Ooh ooh - here's one I remember: "Did you hear that George Bush's library burned down? Yeah, it was a real shame, he lost both books and wasn't even done coloring the second one."
• The Blazing Saddles comment is wonderful...I had never noticed before but there it is....
• But Cleavon Little died, so the only person left to rescue us is The Waco Kid. Man, that was a great movie. I don't much care for Mel Brooks, but that was one fine movie.
• I don't recall who said it, but it seemed so apropos... "He was born on 3rd and thinks he hit a triple." mmmuttly - that honor goes to the always-eloquent but politically martyred Ann Richards, former governor of Texas.
• If I remember correctly, Ann Richards also blessed us with the remark that George H.W. Bush was "born with a silver foot in his mouth." Look, I'll happily concede that the left's hatred for the President is nothing unusual if somebody can point me to a historical precedent that compares to Death4Bush. I'm only in my 30's, but I can't recall ever hearing of a "Hey, let's kill the President" PAC before.
• Hmmm. I just googled 'was born on 3rd and thinks he hit a triple' and I see it attributed variously to Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins *and* Ann Richards.... Ah, well, I love 'em all. Back on topic - although I certainly have a visceral hatred towards Bush (forgive me, I actually am a pacifist) I've certainly seen enough Clinton and Nixon bashing to think Bush is hardly unique in this distinction.
• The Web makes it easier than ever for the disaffected to voice their complaints, and even makes it trivially easy to market t-shirts and mugs with whatever slogans. I think that's probably the biggest difference. If we had the web of today through Clinton's terms, I suspect the hatred the right wing had of him would probably make for as much Clinton-bashing as we see Bush-bashing. I suspect Bush has pissed off a larger number of people, but the right are better at vitriol.
• Space Kitty - I read that it was Ann Richards who said that in the excellent book The Bush Dyslexicon by Mark Crispin Miller. /shameless plug
• oh, good reading! thanks Mfpb 2 21....
• Space Kitty is right. "George Bush was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" is from Jim Hightower. (I heard Ann Richards speak a few years ago, and she gave him credit for that line, and gave Molly Ivins credit for dubbing W. "Shrub", so that's my source.) Ironically enough, the Bush in question was his father. Ann Richards gets mad props for "born with a silver foot in his mouth" (also, again, about 39.) But the vitriol has always been there. There was a piece on NPR this morning that reminded us of the strong feelings about politics back in the 1790's- "Damn John Jay! Damn everyone who won't damn John Jay!! Damn everyone that won't put lights in his windows and sit up all night damning John Jay!!!" and so it goes...
• ambrosia, that's my new favorite rant!
• My new favorite rant. Don't want to seem partisan, though.