Firstly. I'm sorry. This is way long. I won't blame you for skipping it. But I thought it was important to chronicle this journey.
As I was doing some research into an unrelated matter, I came across enough hits re: the "incurious" President Bush that I had to do a targeted search and see just how this whole pathetic meme developed. If the press doesn't accept some culpability for the left/right culture wars, they're not reading what they write. I first searched on 'Bush' and 'incurious' and recorded relevant hits from the Gazette, Times Union, and NY Times. I then went with 'anti-intellectual' and got more hits. Finally, thinking I'd about drained the well, or swamp, dry, I changed that term to 'moron'. No such luck, that term used intentionally to degrade and diminish the President also popped up quite a bit. Finally, not without trepidation, I changed the term to 'idiot'. Oh my. Let's see what I found when I set out to find why the press refused to treat the President with a modicum of grace for 8 years and why they were so unable to cover his presidency seriously, intelligently, fairly, or with any class:
6-16-00, NYT, letter -
It is not George W. Bush's reading list that concerns the electorate but his anti-intellectual stance. Or at least the illusion of such that the media created.
8-3-00, NYT, Nicholas Kristof and Frank Bruni - It took two writers to come up with this?
Yet he now leads the polls and will have, if elected, one of the thinnest resumes in public service of any president in the last century. Two term governor with huge favorable ratings and a track record of success there? Any chance these two teamed up to mock President Teleprompter's resume consisting of about a year as a Senator and a pile of failures at being a lawyer, teacher, education reformer, and even a failed "community organizer" (in his own estimation)? The only thing the Demagogue in Chief has really REALLY shown that he does well...is campaign - particularly - give Teleprompted speeches. I couldn't resist noting this bit of liberal folklore that they slip in without it being tied to anything else in the piece, just that they had to squeeze it in there somehow:
he avoided military service in Vietnam The party he represents?
all-white Republican audiences full of women in pearls Here you go, red meat for the base as they say:
Mr. Bush is determinedly anti-intellectual Factual. No opinions here! No, sir! Just the facts, Ma'am!
the very things that critics often denounce in George W., such as his anti-intellectualism and uninterest in policy details It's like the imaginary case study that would be used by the medias as a blueprint for the next 8 years, only to find that they've constructed an unihabitable cave with no windows or doors instead of a view of a president. His sidekick?
Mr. Cheney, a rich, white relic of his father's administration Ah. The devil. Rich AND white. Just shoot him now.
10-6-00, NYT, Elisabeth Bumiller - Covering some undecideds watching a debate:
Ms. Simon's 28-year-old son, Mark, of University City, saw it differently. He, too, is an independent, and he, too, was undecided before the debate. Now he still is, but he is more comfortable with Mr. Bush. "I had expected him to come off looking like an idiot, and he didn't," said Mr. Simon, a counselor at a group home for teenagers. Gee, where'd he get the impression he would find Bush an idiot?
10-30-00, TU, Michael Kinsley column - Note the date, the election hasn't even happened, yet, but the media is already firmly planting the seed. Just look at the column title used: "IS BUSH IGNORANT OR JUST APATHETIC?" Is he stupid or just useless?
...he sure seems a few whereases shy of an executive order. The problem is probably laziness or complacency rather than actual inability...But if Bush isn't a moron, he is a man of impressive intellectual dishonesty and/or confusion...intellectual dishonesty indicts both a candidate's character and his policy positions...Bush gets away with an extraordinary amount of it. The rest of the "column" is a bloated mass of strawmen and misportrayals that make your stomach churn like too many chili dogs before hitting the Tilt-A-Whirl.
11-3-00, TU, William Raspberry -
What has changed for me since that time is the growing conviction that, to be blunt about it, Bush just isn't experienced enough -- no, isn't smart enough -- for the job. There's no need to review the evidence now except to say that, leaving aside the slips of the tongue and the mangled syntax, there are too many holes in the governor's grasp of policy -- foreign policy in particular. Yeah, why bother to make any effort to determine if the media's preconceived talking point is true? Who's got time for that when there's a Democrat to shill for? I mean, all these really important newspapers already told me he's dumb and he has this habit of tongue-tangling so he must be an idiot, I mean, not like someone that would make fat jokes about women or mock Special Olympics athletes on national TV or anything, but you know, not
elite.
11-20-00, NYT, David Barstow column - Clearly "the people" on the left are fully embracing the media's cartoon of Bush:
This prompts the Gore group to rush in and thrust its signs -- "George W. Bush is a moron" -- in front of the Bush signs...By evening, a limousine driver from West Palm Beach, his dress shirt soaked through with sweat, was going hoarse calling Mr. Bush a "bootlicking moron"...12-14-00, NYT, Alison Mitchell - Any chance of any reality in this sketch of the 43rd president? Yeah, right.
It was a fight that was finally decided by nine Supreme Court justices, who split bitterly over the issue. 7-2? That's not that bitter a split, if you ask me.
A clever politician tapping into the nation's anti-elitism or a defiant anti-intellectual uninterested in the fine points of policy and ideas? A huckster or willfully stupid! Them's your choices, pick one. This is the sort of thing that the hacks in the media just sort of conveniently forget about when they talk about Bush:
And Mr. Bush, according to several aides, brought a briefing on military policy to a screeching halt in the spring of 1999 by interrupting one of his national security advisers to ask, "What's the military for?" This began a long, thoughtful discussion about the purposes and goals of military spending. Instead they'd take this out of context to say that Bush was asking the grown-ups what "military" means and "if they're good eatin'".
1-18-01, NYT, BERNARD WEINRAUB -
"Bush has been minimized and diminished by Hollywood liberals," Mr. Chetwynd said, "and it's reflected in all those 'Saturday Night Live' sketches, which depict him as a doofus. My liberal friends in Hollywood don't like his personality, don't like his smirk. Remember, this is Hollywood," Mr. Chetwynd said. "People with Southern accents are either serial killers or dueling banjo idiots. Even though the guy has a Harvard M.B.A. and a Yale degree, it doesn't count. At least in Hollywood." 4-30-01, TU - Numerous hits were produced by the "brave" statement by actor Martin Sheen that Bush is a "moron", this is an example:
Notably absent was President Bush and the man who plays a Democratic president on the television show, Martin Sheen -- a real-life Bush critic who in February called Bush a "moron." Nothing like calling a Republican president a moron to get you in the paper a dozen times.
6-27-01, TU, Michael Kelly column:
The worrisome thing about Bush is not, as his reactionary critics have it, that he is an idiot who can't get anything right.7-12-01, TU, Bill Maxwell column:
I am talking about the President's lack of knowledge and his apparent inability to intellectualize -- not to mention his inability to articulate -- complex domestic and foreign issues. He has an "apparent" inability to think, but his lack of knowledge is
fact.
Why is Bush always fooling around, winking, nicknaming and playing games (tossing a baseball with the Japanese prime minister one day, goofing around on the links the next, passing a football with African-American churchgoers the following)? Because he gets along with people and sets them at ease in this way, maybe? Ah, here's the heart of the matter, isn't it?
Does he ever read and reflect? Did the press ever ASK the president before setting out on a coordinated, concentrated plan to portray him as a moron? Of course not, otherwise they would not be later floored to learn that Bush, an MBA and Ivy League graduate, devoured hundreds of books, mostly history tomes.
Bush is not a man of letters. Again, factual assertion. How about these letters: M.B.A. This of a man that probably has more of an academic pedigree than 99% of those sneering at him and more accomplishments to his name than 99.99% of them.
Too often, Bush -- unlike his bookish, well-traveled predecessor -- seems to be light years behind the electorate. Example? None, of course. Simply a smear.
Remember how Bill Clinton, despite potentially career-ending scandals, commanded attention with the sheer force of his intellect, by his ability to instantly synthesize ideas? Bush is the opposite: His very lack of intellect commands attention, and, make no mistake, this deficiency is hurting him in the polls. No, the media's lies about him hurt him in the polls. What we learned from insiders is that they were routinely dismayed to find that Clinton would stay up all night bullspitting about policies and never come to a conclusion or decision unless Gore told him what to do while it was Bush that would quickly absorb the various arguments, ask incisive questions to get to the heart of the matter, make a decision, and still be in bed on time. This is what is known as "fact vs. fiction" as well as "media bias". How about rubbing some of this idiocy off onto all conservatives? Here ya go:
Many of you might be thinking at this point that the people to blame for putting this anti-intellectual in the White House are those "dumb" white Southern males? Wrong. Southern white males did put Bush in the White House, but they were not your stereotypical Bubbas. This incurious fool goes on to relate how smart people voted for Bush and, therefore, we must try to figure out why they voted for an idiot. I would argue that this tool never once, not for a millisecond, considered the fact that they voted for Bush not because they ignored his 'lack of intellect', but because they recognized his intellect and appreciated it instead of simply going from a baseline of "all southern males are anti-intellectual, stupid, poor, bubbas" like a certain writer I could name. Want one last guffaw?
Last December, I made this prediction in a column: ``Prez W. will prove to be an empty suit. ... Before 2001 ends, he will be a `world class' embarrassment in foreign and domestic affairs -- if he is permitted to think and speak off the cuff. White House puppeteers definitely will earn their keep during the next four years.'' Hmmm...what president is it that is completely unable to think or speak off the cuff and brings a Teleprompter to the simplest of announcements, including basic meet and greets with foreign officials? How many columns have been written about how this is a sign of a president that needs "minding" and is "unable" to speak without prompting? Exactly. Media bias in its purest form.
8-18-01, NYT, Frank Rich - Frankly, I should just skip anything written by this dim bulb, but, whatever:
After months of deriding the president as an idiot, Democrats have to face the fact...Denigrated as a lightweight and a slacker... This dolt spends a whole column saying Bush is wrong about everything in declaring his stem cell policy is a compromise because not everyone, in fact, basically no one, is happy. That's pretty much what compromise
looks like on a controversial subject. The fact that everyone ends up with a half-full glass is proof not that Bush was wrong, but that he was exactly right. Here's a hint - when one party is thrilled with a 'compromise', it probably wasn't fair.
8-21-01, TU, Marianne Means -
They also hope it will help overcome the public suspicion that Bush is too intellectually incurious to understand the problems of ordinary families. Like the "public" just sort of 'came up' with this "suspicion". Just out of the blue. Uh-huh. You know, Martha, I mights be thinking that thar fella is 'intellectually incurious'!
9-15-01, Gazette, letter - Showing that the lesson is well-learned by the left:
Bush is of the same ilk as the anti-intellectual medieval clerics who hounded Galileo and Copernicus. Except, of course, the fact that he forged a meaningful emissions program with various allies with more realistic goals than the Kyoto rainbow and unicorn dreamers, lived in a very green home, didn't whine about personal carbon footprints while jetting around the globe, and continually made the case for American government investment in hydrogen cell technology. Other than that he was like, so totally unsciency.
10-4-01, TU, poll -
``Saturday Night Live'' producer Lorne Michaels has imposed a moratorium on skits portraying President Bush as a bumbling idiot. Gee, why would he have to do that?
10-20-01, NYT, Bill Keller -
The few sentences he devoted to that youthful experience in his 1999 campaign biography have been mocked as evidence of his incurious nature and his knack for the obvious... Well, we always knew that liberals have a knack for finding penumbras and permutations in things that appear to indicate no such thing, right? If you don't wax on an on about a boring trip to China like Clinton trying to sell another trillion dollars of Obama scrip, you're an intellectual lightweight.
11-3-01, NYT, Clueless Bill Keller - Hey! An oldie but a goodie!
On the other hand, a candidate whose wealth appears to have kept him out of touch with real life -- think of George Bush puzzling over the novelty of a grocery-store scanner -- may be punished. ha! Remember that grand old lie that papers like the Times pushed? Can you believe he's STILL peddling this lie in 2001?!!
3-23-02, NYT, Keller again, 6 months later without any new ideas -
...despite the new president's apparent intellectual weightlessness...the C-student president...This is not a bad moment to subject Mr. Bush's White House to an intellectual wanding. Yeah, like we need graduates from the stringent world of journalism school judging the intellect of our politicians. These are the same journalists that routinely print the political posturings of models, singers, and actresses as legitimate and thoughtful commentary. Think about it.
The second is that, to put it generously, Mr. Bush is not himself an intellectual. The sometimes skillful work of his speechwriters, which he sometimes delivers with conviction, cannot disguise the fact that he is not a deep thinker, a student of ideas, or even a very curious man. For all the spoon-fed portraits of the president exuding new gravitas since the war began, President Bush is still an easy man to take lightly. Hence the media's and the left's utter surprise when he helped the GOP pick up seats in 2002 and won re-election in 2004, wiped a terrorist-sponsoring, genocidal regime off the map in Iraq and replaced it with a functional, though still early, democracy, took Afghanistan away from the terorrist-sponsoring Taliban and started putting its children in
that new democracy into schools instead of bomb vests and poppy fields, watched almost all our important allies toss out liberal governments for Bush-liking, pro-US conservative leaders, etc etc. Can you imagine living in a world where everything you KNOW to be true just doesn't jibe with what actually HAPPENS? That must suck.
On the theory that it takes one to know one, I spent a few days talking to right-of-center thinkers from various camps. Whether or not you share their ideology, their sense of the president is often shrewd and well informed, and it is remarkably consistent across the right wingspan. Just imagine what he could do if he talked to non-liberals more than for a couple of days every few decades. He might be able to go on Rush Limbaugh's show and talk about more than one side of an issue! However, I'm sure it's easy to smear someone you've never actually met and haven't actually bothered to learn anything about.
5-29-02, NYT, Maureen Dowd - First praise for those oh-so-knowledgable europeans she wishes she were:
Parisians were indifferent to the president's arrival, and a few gave his motorcade the intercontinental finger of disapproval, as had some Berliners. And who had the last laugh as Chirac and Schroeder were replaced with Bush admirers and pro-Americans during Bush's presidency? That would be Bush. Back to her favorite theme of the past 8 years:
So now comes the son, who so desperately wants to be all-Texas-all-the-time that he overdoes the anti-elitist, anti-intellectual sneer. Uh-huh. And, finally, perhaps the stupidest thing I have EVER seen written about George W. Bush:
he let his famously thin skin show too easily Excuse me? This is the man that spent 8+ years being vilified as the love child of an evil genius and village idiot by the press and, at his final press conference, thanked the press for doing their job. "famously thin skin"?
These are the great thinkers the press puts in charge of telling America what to think.
11-5-02, NYT, Nicholas Kristof -
Citizens for Legitimate Government put it this way in its e-mail newsletter: "We have an Idiot Usurping Lying Weasel for a President."11-17-02, NYT - I just pulled this as an example of the reporting on this story - when a Canadian official called Bush a "moron" and ended up resigning over it. This story actually produced a lot of hits, the press seemed enamored of the story, perhaps attempting to make a hero out of the classless comment that her PM then had to publicly repudiate:
An aide to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada who had called President Bush a "moron" resigned today, saying that the controversy generated by the comment had made her position untenable. Of course, Chrétien's (corrupt) liberal government would be one of those that would fall and be replaced by a conservative government during Bush's years in office.
1-31-03, NYT, PATRICK E. TYLER - Wait, why did we save their asses from Saddam, again?
As a member of the ruling Sabah family, Ms. Sabah said that she feels "a heavy burden is on my shoulders" to help hold the country together, to set an example of a positive outlook. But sipping cappuccinos at a beachfront restaurant called Le Notre, she confessed that she thinks "George Bush is an idiot," and that America was about to inflict untold suffering on Iraqi civilians. She does not support the ideology of Osama bin Laden, but she and her friend Dina Abdullah Marzook, a fellow college student who joined her for coffee, said they think Mr. bin Laden speaks more eloquently and with more charisma than any American leader.5-26-03, NYT, ADAM CLYMER -
But other Democrats at the meeting of the Western caucus of the Democratic National Committee either wanted to focus on what they called the Bush administration's misuse of force, or to attack the president personally as "the village idiot from Texas," as Julia Hicks, vice chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party, put it.9-25-03, NYT, editorial - Ah, yes, the "bubble" that all Republican presidents live in. Can you imagine a TV show running for 8 years with only a single shtick? How's that circulation going, Times? The pathetic lies that fill this editorial are rather stomach churning. It's like they
intentionally ignore all first-hand accounts to the contrary. DOES NOT COMPUTE!
But it is worrisome when one of the most incurious men ever to occupy the White House takes pains to insist that he gets his information on what the world is saying only in predigested bits from his appointees. Well, if that's what he actually said, yes, that might be a problem. Fortunately for America...it's not. I bet the liberal readers of the Times had a grand old giggle at this portrayal, though...ECHO...Echo...echo...
10-12-03, NYT, Maureen Dowd - What's the one-trick pony got this time:
The incurious George Ah...nothing new...back to sleep....zzzzz
11-10-03, TU, William Raspberry - I'm remembering why I stopped reading his columns...
George Bush is not a dumb man. But before he decided to seek the presidency, he was willfully ignorant of international affairs -- or at least strangely incurious. How many Americans of his age, opportunity, means and family connection hadn't visited even London, Rome or Paris? Ummm...a lot. As usual, the fallacy of the left, that Europe is SO MUCH BETTER than America that we should all want to be there as often as possible instead of 'stuck' in America amongst the sweaty, religious (ewww!) masses.
2-21-04, Gazette, Peggy Noonan column - Noonan notes the typical fare seen in the media:
what [Republicans] were likely to see was an Inside Political Hotspot Beltway Hotbuzz segment that began with questions like "Bush: Madman or Moron?" Or "Scooter Libby: Evil Force or Waning Power?" Or "Dick Cheney: Will the Bush White House Replace Him . . . or Kill Him?"3-7-04, NYT, Maureen Dowd giving free campaign ad space to Kerry -
When I gave George W. Bush a culture quiz in 2000, he gamely struggled to come up with one answer in each category, calling baseball his favorite ``cultural experience.'' Kerry, on the other hand, struggled to stop coming up with a cascade of things in each category, rarely settling on a definite favorite. In what may be an interesting harbinger for their debates, W raced through his whole interview in the same time Kerry took to answer the first question about his favorite movie. After he had roamed through 37 movies, ranging from his "Fellini stage" to his Adam Sandler period, from "National Velvet" to "The Deer Hunter" to "Men in Black," Kerry's aides began to hover. Ummm...have you been to a baseball game? That's America, woman, even today. Ah, for those heady times when Clinton would keep everyone up all night waxing poetic about every side to every issue and then finally deciding not to decide instead of this pathetic Bush that simply listens to arguments, clarifies anything unclear, and then actually
makes a decision. We need the man that told us after the 9-11 attacks he sat dumbfounded at his desk, completely crippled by indecision and confusion for hours. Now THAT'S leadership!
But in culture, as in policy, the senator and the President proved very different creatures -- the complicated vs. the concrete, the ``insatiable,'' as Teresa Heinz Kerry calls her husband's interests, vs. the incurious. Whatever. You bore me. I don't really want to hear Kerry's poetry or how many tap dances he knows. Neither of which will really help lead a nation unless we're going to start "Dancing with the Administration" on Fox!
4-15-04, NYT, laughable editorial -
The Price of Incuriosity Gee, where ya going with this with that kind of title?
Americans knew George W. Bush was an incurious man when they elected him... And we know this because it's what we told ourselves and everything we say is true and we only listen to ourselves! It all works out so great that way! Amazing that, even though they mention "two administrations", the name 'Bush' comes up 5 times and the name 'Clinton'? Zero. Yeah, 'amazing'. Right.
6-27-04, NYT -
At the Kenwood Towne Center Theaters in St. Bernard, Ohio, north of Cincinnati, one moviegoer kept up a running commentary aloud, and no one seemed to mind. "He's dangerous," when Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld flashed on the screen. "He's an idiot ," he said of Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security. "He's a traitor," the man said, watching Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, wet his comb with his own saliva before combing his hair. And his pronouncement on President Bush? "He's clueless," the man said.7-4-04, NYT, PETER APPLEBOME -
"There's that bumper sticker I saw, 'Somewhere in Texas there's a village that's missing its idiot ,'" said Neil Gomberg, who works in advertising8-19-04, NYT, Dahlia Lithwick column - The one non-letter hit I got pointing out how widespread and toxic the left's assault on Bush was, although only because it could backfire on Dems:
It cannot have escaped anyone's notice that much of the current Bush-bashing aims to infantilize him. The most devastating segment in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," for instance, features the president -- just after he learned of the second attack on the World Trade Center -- perched on a chair in a Florida classroom, looking glazed and confused...A glance at the top 150 ads selected by MoveOn.org for its recent political advertising contest, "Bush in 30 Seconds," similarly reveals the extent to which childishness is woven into the current Bush-bashing...Several of the proposed anti-Bush commercials use kids to condemn the president for unsophisticated thinking, for an infantile worldview...What's wrong with continuing efforts to characterize Mr. Bush as a not-particularly-smart third grader? For one thing, it plays to every stereotype of liberals as snotty know-it-alls who think everyone in a red state is anti-intellectual or simple-minded...Whether the president could outscore your kids on the SAT is a distraction from that fact. Finally, there is a psychological consequence to labeling the president an incurious frat boy...This election is not a choice between adults and children, and it will not be won or lost with jokes about whether Laura ties the president's shoes each morning before she points him toward the Oval Office.9-24-04, NYT, Caryn James (book reviewer) - The Times' book reviewer giggles at a swipe by an author at Bush:
In one of Ms. Gore's better lines, Sammy comments on the silliness of voters liking a candidate's personality, "You could like a moron but that didn't make him competent." The remark works even if you aren't thinking about how the author's father, Al, was considered the smart one in the 2000 presidential election. It's too bad there aren't more such pointed observations in both books... Yup, too bad there wasn't more of that kind of intelligent banter.
10-21-04, NYT, Maureen Dowd giving free campaign ad space to Kerry -
Miracles make the incurious even more incurious. Amazing. Now Bush governs according to 'miracles'. What, exactly,
wouldn't the left attribute to Bush? Why didn't they just say he used to appear at intelligence briefings clad only in yellowed underpants (on his head), high as a kite, and simply hollered for someone to 'spank me!' over and over again? It would fit their thinking, anyway, so why not say it? What exactly would have stopped them from saying it? 30% of the population, at least, would have taken it as gospel truth.
W., it seems, really believes he's the one. Boy did she get a lesson in the last election on who REALLY believes "he's the one".
10-21-04, TU, RICARDO BACA Denver Post -
Baez is downright angry when she talks about President Bush , global warming and Iraq. ``We're just two steps from a fascist state if Bush gets back in office,'' she said. ``Everybody has always said, `Oh, he's a lot smarter than he makes out,' but I don't think so. I think he's an idiot , and it's the people around him who are smart.'' How'd that work out for ya? Who'da thunk the 'two steps' were 'Barack' and 'Obama', eh?
5-17-05, TU, Brian McGrory - I don't even want to get into this. It sounds like the plot to an episode of some liberal fantasy like The West Wing. Mock (I hope 'mock') hyperventilating because the President wasn't disturbed while execising in Maryland due to a possible security incident in DC. Umm...the President wasn't
in DC. Forget it, I can't even be bothered going into the premise of this "I need a column and I need it now! Deadline! Ah!!!!!" piece.
You have to wonder if this notoriously incurious President looked up, heard the fighter planes flying overhead, and wondered, even for a flicker of a second, what might have been taking place. I guess it's a lot easier to write if you keep your head in the sand and never hear anything but bounces in the echo chamber. I only listen to the liberal media and everything I hear tells me this is true.
9-14-05, NYT, Maureen Dowd - I think she's bored at this point. She's certainly boring.
in order to capture Incurious George's attention... hmmmmmmmmmm....hmmmmmmmm...hmmmmmmmm What's that? Can't hear you over the humming.
10-10-05, TU, CYNTHIA HALL CLEMENTS -
It is time for Democrats to realize that partisan attacks are not the same thing as a positive agenda for change. It is past time for Democrats to be part of the process to move the political discussion in this country from personalities to policy, from idiots - mostly on the far right - to issues. Good. Nice analysis. Very detailed. Bravo.
10-25-05, NYT, Allessandra Stanley (TV reviewer!) - Yes, even a TV reviewer in a liberal paper is not above lecturing America on how anti-intellectual conservatives are in her praise of far-left Colbert's show:
Mr. Colbert routinely mocks the kind of anti-intellectual populism perfected by Fox News. I guess Stanley isn't too "intellectual" to make it obvious that as a TV REVIEWER she can't even be bothered to
watch FoxNews. You can see how the campaign goes...first Bush is the idiot frat boy, and before you know
all conservatives are a mob with torches out to burn witches.
2-11-06, NYT, Maureen Dowd - Still no original thoughts:
to hide the callous portrait of Incurious George in Crawford hmmmmmmmmmm.....
2-13-06, NYT, Elisabeth Bumiller - Finds praise, as the leftist papers always do, for any ex-Republican or ex-insider that decides the grass (and pay) is a little greener when you stop dancing with the one that brung ya:
...also criticizes the White House for "an anti-intellectual distrust of facts and analysis"...2-22-06, NYT, Maureen Dowd - Gosh, this joke never gets tired, does it, Mo?
Although, as usual, Incurious George didn't even know about it until after the fact. hmmmmmmmm.....
3-10-06, Gazette, letter -
A few months after the 2000 election, a man in Washington who, on a weekly basis, briefed U.S. presidents on world trouble spots, told me that George W. Bush was the most uninformed, uninterested, incurious president he'd ever encountered. Ummm.....yeaaaah. Right. The guy feeding the ducks at the park is actually a national intelligence advisor. I have to tell you, Mr. Quackers, I don't like what those Australians are up to! Are you sure he didn't also say that Bush wears his pants backwards and smells bad? Did you know "gullible" isn't in the dictionary?
3-20-06, NYT, Paul Krugman - Now you know I'm nuts, quoting this huckster -
"The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is 'incompetent,' and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: 'idiot' and 'liar.' " So says the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, whose most recent poll found that only 33 percent of the public approves of the job President Bush is doing.3-24-06, TU, blurb -
Wallace might not have helped his cause by saying Bush is "obviously an incurious man" while talking to The Associated Press on Wednesday. He later called back to amend that remark with some praise for how the President handled himself during question-and-answer sessions with the public and press this week. "He's been damned good," he said. "There's nothing you can ask him that he's not totally familiar with. It's totally different. He's a pro now." Bush has been in office 5 years at this point and we have reporters shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!, when they actually meet the guy they've been calling an idiot only to find out he isn't. DOES NOT COMPUTE! Of course he assumes it's some new phenomenon - like he's not an idiot NOW, but he was last week.
4-26-06, NYT, Caryn James -
Today even the late-night comics are stuck in an obvious Bush -as- idiot rut.6-20-06, NYT, our favorite book reviewer Michiko Kakutani -
This book augments the portrait of Mr. Bush as an incurious and curiously uninformed executive that Mr. Suskind earlier set out in "The Price of Loyalty" and in a series of magazine articles on the president and key aides. I find it amazing how someone can sit down and write something that will go in a newspaper, the New York Times no less, about how amazing and inciteful it is when a writer gives their opinion that happens to EXACTLY coincide with the predetermined notions they had when they sat down to write it. Like, wow, this is newsworthy! This writer that already thinks Bush is an idiot wrote another book where they find, LO AND BEHOLD!, that Bush is an idiot! Egads! How far in the red is your newspaper?
7-4-06, TU, Fred LeDuckhunter -
We are not seeing anything like that today, post 9/11, although Lord knows we have every right to be furious with the idiots mismanaging the country at the moment.7-23-06, NYT, Jim Rutenberg -
Or does his bread-muffled voice confirm the view of him as a base and incurious cowboy with all the diplomatic finesse -- and eating habits -- of a Cossack, as others say? Gee. I wonder where this Times writer falls. Oh I wonder.
8-16-06, NYT, Maureen Dowd column - Continuing a theme - not only is Bush supposed to be a moron, but supposedly he spent 8 years proudly
trumpeting his idiocy:
Camus is not beach reading -- or brush reading. How on earth did this book make it into the hands of our proudly anti-intellectual president?9-30-06, NYT, Book Reviewer Michiko Kakutani - Oh, noble bastion of liberal epitomization, descend from your noble heights, speaker of truths Woodward, and smite the foul Bush!
President Bush emerges as a passive, impatient, sophomoric and intellectually incurious leader... Thanks for clearing that up, Mr. Woodward. I must say, we were waiting with bated breath to see if a left-wing liberal icon desperate for liberal approval would have the President "emerge" to PERFECTLY fit the pre-conceived media cartoon outline of Bush. Amazing! What skill! What ability! What judgement! How on earth did you manage to tease out the fact that Bush is EXACTLY what you wanted him to be going into the writing and having it be EXACTLY what the press wanted to read? Wow!
Startlingly little of this overall picture is new, of course. NOOOO!!!!!!
Were the war in Iraq not a real war that has resulted in more than 2,700 American military casualties and more than 56,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, the picture of the Bush administration that emerges from this book might resemble a farce. Wow! EXACTLY what the liberal editors across America wanted to hear! Can you believe it! What LUCK! How utterly CONVENIENT! The phrase you're thinking here is "echo chamber", isn't it?
10-11-06, TU, NEKESA MUMBI MOODY Associated Press -
There was Streisand, enduring a smattering of very loud jeers as she and "George Bush" - a celebrity impersonator - muddled through a skit that portrayed the President as a bumbling idiot. Though most of the crowd offered polite applause during the slightly humorous routine, it got a bit too long, especially for a few in the audience who just wanted to hear Streisand sing like she had been doing for the past hour.11-4-06, NYT, letter - ECHO, ECho, Echo, echoooo... -
None of these things are true of President Bush, whom the media have politely called "incurious" for the last six years. As a new presidential cycle begins, we should speak frankly about the kind of intellectual sophistication that the presidency requires -- which Mr. Obama appears to have, and which Mr. Bush sorely lacks. Too bad he can't string two words together without a Teleprompter and has managed to spend his early days in office insulting the Special Olympics and making fat jokes about female singers on national TV. Disappointed much?
1-1-07, TU, HDS Greenway -
Cheney's manipulation of intelligence before the Iraq war is now legend. Indeed it is a liberal legend, fabricated of whole cloth and a victim of "DOES NOT COMPUTE!" (see below, I'm doing this out of order).
Stubbornly incurious and utterly convinced in the rightness of his instincts over sober consideration and evidence... Sigh. Again with the stupid claims without any evidence. Pick a topic. Global warming? Evidence is on Bush's side. Iraq? Evidence of every intelligence service in the world on Bush's side. Foreign policy? Shift of a dozen nations to pro-US leadership during his term again shows Bush was right and the evidence proves it. I, personally, would find it hard to write stuff all the time where I had make carp up and tell lies that are easily contradicted by the real world and act like I believe it. Then again, I don't make a living by making liberal editors giggle by insulting Republicans. What? Your paper is failing? You don't say!
9-15-07, NYT, EDMUND L. ANDREWS and DAVID E. SANGER - Ah, yes, the glowing portrait of washed up Alan Greenspan, the self-described Republican that thinks fondly of the relationships he had with Clinton's Treasury secretaries while deriding Bush's as useless:
By contrast, Mr. Greenspan paints a picture of Mr. Bush as a man driven more by ideology and the desire to fulfill campaign promises made in 2000, incurious about the effects of his economic policy, and an administration incapable of executing policy. Yeah, thanks. The guy staked his administration on fighting terrorists and ensuring the Clinton recession didn't swallow America via highly successful tax cuts...but he never gave economic policy, this MBA, much thought. Talk about incurious reporting.
12-5-07, NYT, editorial - This claim, so chock full of hubris that it's a wonder the printing presses didn't gum up, should make you laugh:
We know that the president is an incurious man... If that doesn't describe the media's problem with Bush in a nutshell, I don't know what can. For 8 years they
KNEW this about Bush and carefully avoided anything that might upset their narrow little worldview. Again...talk about incurious. No wonder they were so floored by reports of Bush's voracious appetite for books and any firsthand reports on the guy's intelligence. The media chiefs of the world (not just the US) spent more than 8 years acting like a run-amok robot, head spinning and arms flailing, wailing "DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES NOT COMPUTE!" at any suggestion that Bush wasn't an incurious, anti-intellectual moron. Not a good starting point for unbiased reporting. Earlier in the piece they repeat their most favoritest lie of all time about Bush - that he lied about Iraq.
3-11-08, NYT, Michiko Kakutani - Here a book reviewer (yes, you read that right) tells us commoners that not only is Bush an anti-intellectual crusader, but ALL conservatives are:
Conservatives have turned the term "intellectual," like the term "liberal," into a dirty word in politics... And don't think people of faith are exempt, Kakutani also delights in the author's proclamation that religion (despite it's history of educating the world) is responsible for the rise of anti-intellectualism in America:
"the American experiment in complete religious liberty led large numbers of Americans to embrace anti-rational, anti-intellectual forms of faith." Yet the reviewer manages to not explain how the author's book makes a lick of sense - the premise seems to be that we're stupider now than other places that are more secular and we're getting stupider the more secular we get. Huh? These are the people we should have judge who is "anti-intellectual"? People that unfavorably compare us to more secular europe because we're getting stupider the more like them we get? I can't even
try to make sense of that.
6-28-08, NYT, JON CARAMANICA - Because I care what rock stars think:
But before the final song, Mr. Stipe couldn't quite help but offer one last mini-sermon. "George W. Bush is a pathetic idiot ," he said.9-7-08, NYT, book reviewer extraordinaire Michiko Kakutani again - Ah, that noble hero of the left, slayer of conservative villains, Woodward!
In this respect, Mr. Woodward's portrait of Mr. Bush in "The War Within" -- a book Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, has called incomplete and misleading -- amplifies the one he drew in his last book, "State of Denial" (2006), in which the president emerged as a stubborn and intellectually incurious leader... You see how this unfolds? It's not a left-wing, fame-hungry reporter giving his opinion that Bush is an idiot, oh no! Instead the TRUTH! about Bush
emerges! that Bush is an idiot! Because, of course, Woodward is infallable and whatever he writes is utterly bereft of opinion or spin! And this is in a BOOK REVIEW! Talk about widespread media memes.
10-1-08, NYT, Maureen Dowd column - With a mere month left in his presidency, Dowd manages
in a column reflecting on the death of Paul Newman to insert her typical lazy dig at Bush and 'pass the torch' to Sarah Palin, a woman with more accomplishments and success in her left pinky than Dowd could ever claim, and all conservatives:
...a lost art in the anti-intellectual conservative set of W. and Sarah Palin.10-15-08, TU, JENNIFER GISH - Nothing like brainwashing your kids for spits and giggles:
My son Bernie thinks George W. Bush is an " idiot ." He's 5. As you can imagine, he didn't come to that opinion on his own. In much the same way there's no such thing as a "Catholic child" or "Muslim child," just the child of Catholic or Muslim parents, there's also no such thing as a Democratic or Republican child. But I think there is such a thing as a progressive child, because I think those values are mainstream values that most kids believe innately. For example, I've told Bernie that our current president doesn't make decisions to help people in general, but just to help a little group of his friends. And we've told him that we think it's somewhat more likely that Barack Obama will help people than that John McCain will, and we explain why.11-2-08, TU, why-is-he-still-published Harry Rosenfeld -
Because of his incurious mind and ideological certitude, he sent American troops into battle in insufficient numbers and equipment exposing them to avoidable risks. Yes, that's exactly it, Harry. Well done. Go have a lie down, why don't'cha. I mean, could you BE more incurious about the causes, effects, or precursors of the Iraq War? Somehow I doubt it. At the end of 2008 how intellectually lazy and inept is it to still go around whining about Bush being "incurious" as if that somehow explains everything you don't like? The rest of the column is stupid carp like this:
His cavalier attitude and braggadocio often estranged America's natural allies and their peoples, whose support is more important than ever in dealing with the international threats that have intensified during his stewardship. Why not just put a sign around your neck reading "I don't pay attention to what has happened in the world in the past 8 years. Wake me when it's time for Wheel of Fortune."
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Oh, man. If you got through all that, heck of a job. I hope you have a firmer appreciation of just how firmly the media set the hook and then spent 8 years reinforcing it with basically not a modicum of variation as the echo chamber just amplified it and returned it. Seriously, this is the perfect situation of "I only listen to my liberal peers. My liberal peers tell me Bush is an idiot. Everything I hear is true, I don't need to actually investigate or anything."
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