Here are my five Elvis songs for Bush: What would be your “Good riddance, Mr president” song? (Plus clips)
Today, I realized, not for the first time these last two or three weeks, that the man will only be with us for a few months longer – and won’t it be strange, after eight, seemingly interminable years, to say goodbye to him?
You know that you are getting old when you can, actively, from memory and direct experience, compare the four, and sometimes eight years’ reign of a handful or more presidents.
I’ve mentioned it more than a few times on this blog but I’m Dutch – very old Europe, in Rummie speak – and I do remember, back in ‘76, how the reaction in Europe, at the time, was a kind of collective shrug, combined with a continentally raised eyebrow, all of which said, “Huh! They’re electing peanut farmers now…?!”
Little did we know (as the saying goes) that the peanut farmer would be followed by a B-movie actor, who’d be succeeded by his ex-CIA bureaucrat vice, who’d go on to be beaten by a non-inhaling, draft-dodging cigar & intern lover, who, after eight years, would be replaced by a born-again, ex-alcoholic coke-head.
Which just teaches us Europeans right for being sniffy about peanut farmers.
Anyway, thinking of Bush, I was reminded of what so many of his critics have been saying about him for ages. That he is incurious, and lazy; someone who’d prefer following Garfield’s antics in the Sunday papers, over trying to follow any geo-political argument, expressed in some state document, put on his desk.
I’ve never met the man, so I can’t really say if all of these charges are true – but for a lazy and incurious bugger he’s accomplished quite a bit. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a concentration camp on Cuba, rendition flights and torture cells all over the world – not to mention the astronomical budget deficit and the erosion of Americans’ civil rights at home and a vast decline of America’s popularity around the world.
You know, if that constitutes ‘lazy and incurious’, I would really hate to see what happened if the guy decided to take his finger out of his arse, for a change…
Anyway, the reason that I was thinking about America’s 43rd president right now, is because I just finished reading another article about Oliver Stone’s upcoming movie about Bush.
I have to say that I can’t wait to give it a miss.
I mean, I haven’t been sleeping the last eight years, so I’m not at all feeling the need to be, Sleeping Beauty style, kissed awake by Prince Oliver.
Yes, I liked his Nixon movie – but mainly because I was in awe of Anthony Hopkins playing the part of the unravelling president. I have no idea who won the Oscar for best acting that year but Hopkins should have won the bloody thing. Still, Stone’s other presidential pic, JFK, was truly pathetic, so, I’ll not go see this one, thank you very much.
Ah well, not wanting to waste my time seeing that movie will, most probably, be the only plan of action George ‘The Decider’ Bush and I will ever agree on.
Still, like Oliver Stone, I would love to give president Bush a going-away present. I wasn’t sure what you can give the man who already has (fucked up) everything, so I decided to dedicate a few music clips to him. I’m not sure what the president’s taste in music is but since he is rather conservative, and because even Nixon liked to have his photo taken with him, I decided Elvis would probably be a safe enough bet.
So, from me, to King George, five songs by the King:
1) Way down
2) Hound dog
Ah yes, and for those who can’t wait to see Oliver Stone’s new movie, here’s a trailer:
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