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Jewish World Review April 4, 2001 / 11 Nissan, 5761

Debra J. Saunders

Debra J. Saunders
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Consumer Reports


Bush bashers don't know squat

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- IT is easy to figure why President George W. Bush can be so gracious about being the brunt of jokes for his syntax-challenged speech. Or as he quipped to the Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner last week, "Now, ladies and gentlemen, you have to admit, in my sentences I go where no man has gone before."

Bush understands that when you're a Republican politician, you get typecast into one of two molds: stupid or evil. Dan Quayle or Richard Nixon. That's it.

At the California Democratic convention last weekend, Mayor Willie Brown joined the Bush-belittling club when he quipped that the country "elected the symbol of ebonics to the presidency of the nation." And: "It raises serious questions about whether he's really white."

It didn't seem to occur to Brown that, having dubbed himself "Da Mayor," his ebonics line made for a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

And let us take a moment of silence to consider what choice names Brown would have hurled at Bush if Bush had made a similar tasteless ethnic dig.

I can't go a whole week without hearing cackling about what a lame-brain Bush is. Yes, he's so stupid, he got elected president. Or for those who don't believe he was elected: He's so stupid, he won in the courts and the Electoral College. That's because, they say, he picks good advisers who keep him from looking stupid.

He's so stupid, he's their president.

It's true. Bush has said some real whoppers. "Is our children learning?" is probably his most famous gaffe. For good reason. It's hard to appear as if you care about education if you can't manage simple subject-verb agreement.

(At least it beats, "It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is.")

Bush bashers don't think of how they'd come across if their every word were plastered on the front page. Witness talk-radio callers who barely can spit out a clean sentence as they bash Bush's speaking style.

After examining his academic history, Vanity Fair writer Gail Sheehy came to the conclusion that Bush suffers from dyslexia. While Bush and his team deny it, Sheehy laid out a persuasive case. If the president isn't officially dyslexic, his brain does seem to be wired in a way that he often says things he doesn't mean. (When he said, "the federal government ought to have maximum flexibility," he meant states ought to have flexibility with federal funds.)

But if Bushisms are not the result of speaking fatigue, and Sheehy's right, then the Special City has developed a new pastime based on ridiculing a man for a congenital problem. How special. How tolerant.

Ah, but it's so transparent. These Democrats bash Bush's brains because they have this deep-seated need to ridicule people who think differently from the way they do. They're like junior high school students eyeing a classmate wearing the wrong clothes.

Besides, what's the point of being a Democrat if you can't feel superior? Being a Dem is supposed to prove you are intellectual and caring. Ergo ipso facto, people with different viewpoints must be unintellectual and brutal.

The big joke is that this posture puts Dems in the awkward position of feeling superior because they got beat by a dumb guy.

As Forrest Gump's mama told him, stupid is as stupid does.


Comment JWR contributor Debra J. Saunders's column by clicking here.


Up


04/02/01: Drugging our oldsters
03/30/01: Robert Lee Massie exercises his death wish
03/28/01: Cheney's nuclear reactor
03/26/01: Where California and Mexico meet
03/16/01: Boy's sentence was no accident
03/14/01: Soft money, hard reform
03/12/01: Banks, big credit lines and consumer bankruptcy
03/09/01: Free speech dies in Berkeley
03/02/01: When rats have rights
02/28/01: Move a frog, go to jail?
02/26/01: They knew they'd get away with it
02/20/01: How Dems define tax fairness
02/16/01: The jackpot casino Carmel tribe?
02/14/01: You can fight school success
02/12/01: Hannibal -- with guts this time
02/08/01: A family of jailbirds
02/05/01: Reality's most demeaning TV moments
02/01/01: Justice for the non-Rich
01/26/01: Hail to the chiefs of D.C. opinion
01/24/01: A day of mud and monuments
01/22/01: Diversity, division, de-lovely D.C.
01/19/01: Parties agree: Give back the money
01/17/01: Get tough with the oil companies, or forget pumping more Alaskan crude
01/15/01: Mineta better pray that no attending confirmation senator has ever driven to San Jose during rush hour
01/12/01: Europeans should look in the mirror
01/10/01: Dems' reasons for dissin' Dubya's picks
01/08/01: Jerry, curb your guru
01/03/01: A foe of Hitler and friend of Keating
12/28/00: Nice people think nice thoughts
12/26/00: The Clinton years: Epilogue
12/21/00: 'Tis the season to free nonviolent drug offenders 12/18/00: A golden opportunity is squandered
12/15/00: You can take the 24 years, good son
12/13/00: Court of law vs. court of public opinion
12/08/00: A salvo in the war on the war on drugs
12/06/00: Don't cry, Butterfly: Big trees make great decks
12/04/00: Florida: Don't do as Romans did
11/30/00: Special City's hotel parking ticket
11/27/00: No means yes, yes means more than yes
11/22/00: The bench, the ballot and fairness
11/20/00: Mendocino, how green is your ballot?

© 2000, Creators Syndicate