Terrific piece in the latest Harper’s by Mark Slouka — I highly recommend you all go out and read it. Or stay home. Same difference. Regardless, a passage caught me which really sums up the last eight years, and demonstrates how we need to think about the people we put in power;
At a White House reception a couple of years ago, President George Bush asked Senator-elect Jim Webb how things were going for his son, a Marine serving in Iraq. “I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb replied. “I didn’t ask you that,” the president shot back. “I asked you how your boy was doing.”
Slouka then goes on to detail the outrage the national media exhibited — not towards the President, for his callous and insulting response — but rather towards Webb for his inappropriate question. His follow-up nails what we should all feel about a president, Bush or otherwise.
But it was left to Kate Zernike, the author of the Times article, to place the cherry atop this shameful confection in the form of a seemingly offhand parenthetical: “(On criticizing the president in his own house, Ms. Baldrige quotes the French: ça ne se fait pas — ‘it is not done.’)”
To which one might reply, in the parlance of my native town: Why the fuck not? Répétez après moi: It ain’t the man’s house. We’re letting him borrow it for a time. And he should behave accordingly — that is, as one cognizant of the honor bestowed upon him-or risk being evicted by the people in favor of a more suitable tenant.