The Latest From The “Dubya Legacy Salvage Project”

(And I posted here too - this is a recording.)

I really went back and forth concerning whether or not I should even waste my time with this, but I felt I had to.

Last week, CBS Golf broadcaster Peter David (oops...my bad) Feherty quite rightly caused an outrage with a ridiculous, utter non-joke based on that tired remark about “suppose (insert your three most hated people here – usually ends up with a lawyer and two others) get out of an elevator, and you only have a gun with two bullets. What do you do,” and the punch line is that you “shoot the lawyer twice,” or something like that (ha ha).

Well, as noted here, Feherty’s supposed quip involved the murder of the two Democratic Party leaders in Congress. And I must admit that it’s shocking that, to date, there has been no comment on the matter from the CBS broadcasting network.

Feherty made his remark in a column that appeared in something called “D Magazine,” which I suppose has to do with the city of Dallas, Texas (I guess, though, that if you don’t just know that, then you’re not cool or something – kind of like in Philly where, if someone says “I’ll meet you at the clothespin” and you say “what?,” then it’s the same deal).

Well, since I was so repulsed by that lone entry, I thought there might be more interesting stuff in this “D Magazine” piece, and boy, was I right (after a few paragraphs, I knew I would need the hip-waders, if you know what I mean). Feherty’s piece is actually one of five columns written along the lines of “Welcome home, George and Laura” included in this entire mess (Feherty’s column is the third of the sequence).

Before you get to Feherty, though, you encounter the first of these yokels, and that would be Wick Allison, who tells us the following about how popular Dubya supposedly is in Asia (all five columns can be accessed from here)…

Ex-presidents seem to follow a protocol that requires them to disappear for a few years after they leave office. Jimmy Carter was barely heard from after being beat by Ronald Reagan…

Wankery right out of the gate – yes, this stuff is THAT bad. In response, we learn the following about Carter from this Wikipedia article (about what he did when he was supposedly “barely heard from”)…

In 1982, he established The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, to advance human rights and alleviate unnecessary human suffering. The non-profit, nongovernmental Center promotes democracy, mediates and prevents conflicts, and monitors the electoral process in support of free and fair elections. It also works to improve global health through the control and eradication of diseases such as Guinea worm disease, river blindness, malaria, trachoma, lymphatic filariasis, and schistosomiasis. It also works to diminish the stigma against mental illnesses and improve nutrition through increased crop production in Africa. A major accomplishment of The Carter Center has been the elimination of more than 99%of cases of Guinea worm disease, a debilitating parasite that has existed since ancient times, from an estimated 3.5 million cases in 1986 to fewer than 10,000 cases in 2007.[48] The Carter Center has monitored 70 elections in 28 countries since 1989.[49] It has worked to resolve conflicts in Haiti, Bosnia, Ethiopia, North Korea, Sudan and other countries. Carter and the Center actively support human rights defenders around the world and have intervened with heads of state on their behalf.

And here are some of the awards Carter received while he was “barely heard from” (after recovering from a $1 million loss due to mismanagement of assets in trust while he was president)…

• Harry S. Truman Public Service Award, 1981
• Ansel Adams Conservation Award, Wilderness Society, 1982
• Human Rights Award, International League of Human Rights, 1983
• World Methodist Peace Award, 1985
• Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, 1987
• Edwin C. Whitehead Award, National Center for Health Education, 1989
• Jefferson Award, American Institute of Public Service, 1990
• Liberty Medal, National Constitution Center, 1990
• Spirit of America Award, National Council for the Social Studies, 1990
• Physicians for Social Responsibility Award, 1991
• Aristotle Prize, Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, 1991
• W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, 1992

Also, Allison tells us that Dubya’s approval numbers in India supposedly range from the “high 50s to low 70s,” though of course he doesn’t provide a citation and I can’t find anything to support that online. What I can find, though, is a link to this 2006 story in which we learn that Former Commander Codpiece had planned to address the Indian parliament, but had to cancel because of the threat of being heckled by a not-inconsequential number of MPs (Dubya also got into trouble a year ago with a remark here about India’s middle class that was misinterpreted; he’s committed bigger offenses in my book, but since Obama regularly gets beaten up by Fix Noise and their acolytes for stuff like this, I’m applying the same standard to his predecessor).

Besides, India feels more of a kinship with this country due to our assistance in dealing with the horrific Mumbai attacks last year. That is bound to give a boost in the approval numbers of anyone who is president at the time, regardless of political party.

The next writer is Trey Garrison, who tells us the following (on the matter of what you’re supposed to do if you encounter Number 43 and Laura, hopefully not the latter in another vehicular accident)…

When the former president is being driven around town, they won’t close down roads like they do for the current president. At most, you’ll see rolling roadblocks at intersections. A lower profile means better security.

Really? This Think Progress story from February tells us…

Police officers have been turning away vehicles trying to enter the Preston Hollow neighborhood, “explaining that it is closed to the general public.”

To be fair, I should note the former first couple had not set up their private security service yet. And actually, the part about not closing down the roads is true, as it happens.

They didn’t have to – they’d closed off the entire neighborhood.

(And by the way, I’m trying to ignore the jibes at “the current president,” as well as the never-ending torrent of digs in all of these columns Bush “not grasping at every dollar,” like a certain former president from Arkansas supposedly did…at least Dubya didn’t end up going broke having to pay legal expenses to defend a prosecutorial inquisition as his predecessor did…as well as Carter being an “unwelcome gadfly” during 42’s term from ’93-’01, as well as the line about “future historians looking at Iraq as a blip on the radar screen” – as I said at the outset, you have to put your hip-waders on right away here.)

And this leads me, at long last, to Feherty, who tells us the following…

“(Dubya’s) two terms must have felt like the rest of the world had inserted the Washington Monument into him and it was his job to heave it out.”

Pleasant – also (on the matter of some of Feherty’s “D” neighbors)…

“I hate (the neighbors) that want to talk to me who aren’t doctors or gun dealers or who don’t have their own airplanes.”

“When I make it home, I slam the door behind me and peak at the letterbox to see if I’ve been spotted by any of the bastards who live nearby.”

And there’s an unbelievable amount of vitriol in Feherty’s rant along the lines of “poor George and Laura, being inconvenienced by their filthy rabble admirers,” and in that vein (in the category of more people who should avoid the Bushes)…

“I’m talking to you, the guy with the champagne flute, the stupid grin, and the trophy wife who, if she has one more facelift, will be wearing a triangular beard.”

Wow – this magazine actually printed that (time for another blogger ethics panel, my fellow prisoners).

Oh, and did you know that, according to Feherty, people who don’t like Dubya are “self-righteous, indignant jerks”? And that Dubya was bad the same way as Donny and Marie Osmond (paraphrasing is close)?

Also…

“If Dubya were to reappear at 92 years old, his first album would probably go platinum. And, anyway, it will be that long before any of us knows the truth about how and why he played some of the rotten cards he was dealt.”

And right after Feherty writes that ugly sentence about Reid and Pelosi, he tells us this…

“I’ve never met a soldier who didn’t love this president and this country, and I’ve met a bunch of them, at home and abroad, in hospitals and in theater.” (note: Feherty goes on relentlessly about how he "supports the troops.")

In response, I have only this to say; David Feherty, meet Jon Soltz (here).

I have to be honest with you – at this point, I really couldn’t take any more of this stuff (there were two other columns related to the Bushes, but I couldn’t even look at them - I'd had enough).

So there you have it, probably more of a peek than you’d like through the looking glass at all the “dead enders” out there who think George and Laura deserve anything besides scorn and ridicule and actually deserve to be treated with anything approximating human dignity.

And by the way, if you want to ask CBS president and CEO Les Moonves why Feherty is still employed as a golf analyst with the network, please click here and complete this form (pertains to CBS News I know, but all that stuff ends up in the same place regardless of its department of origin).