Last Thursday Rollins College celebrated Fox Day, the most joyous day of the academic year. One student of my acquaintance told me she anticipated Fox Day the way she used to look forward to Christmas as a child.
A little background for those not in the know: Fox Day comes in the spring and the exact day of its coming is kept secret until the hour just before dawn on the designated day. The president of the college announces Fox Day by appearing on campus around 5 or 6 am and placing the statue of the Fox in the center of Mills lawn. On the day when the much loved Fox appears, all classes are canceled and everyone, students, staff, faculty and administrators, are free to do what they choose during the day and encouraged to gather for a barbecue late in the afternoon.
Here's a picture from 1983’s Fox Day.
One could argue that the "no business as usual" disruption of having a sudden and unannounced closing of the school’s official functions for a whole day every spring is a frightful inconvenience. On the other side there are some Fox enthusiasts pushing to have one Fox Day for every semester: Spring, Fall, Maymester and even during January’s week-long Intersession -- but I doubt that even the laid back ethos of Winter Park could accommodate that much goofing off.
This year it was reported that as the President drove up and delivered the Fox, a throng of students was waiting in hopeful anticipation for his arrival one of whom called out, “You made my day, Duncan!”
A more respectful greeting might have been, “You made my day, President Duncan,” but the president seemed unperturbed as he politely shook the student’s hand. I suppose some allowance has to be made for the anxiety and enthusiasm that build up to near explosive proportions when one beautiful spring day after another passes with no sign of Sir Fox. When he finally shows up, the emotions can be downright volcanic. Students run up and down dorm hallways in pre-dawn hours banging on their friends’ doors shouting, “It’s Fox Day! It’s Fox Day!”
Telephone networks are quickly activated to spread the word to off-campus students and employees.
During some spring semesters in the past, the Fox was so late in coming that stirrings among the student body suggested an ugly bout of revolutionary violence was in the offing. And, let’s be frank, it isn’t just the students who anticipate the appearance of the Fox.
It is just the students, however, who play Fox Day Roulette. This high risk gamble entails neglecting homework for a night in the hope that the morning will bring the Fox and, consequently, No Homework Need Be Turned In! This year a very convincing rumor had it that Tuesday, April 6, would surely be Fox Day, and the losers at Fox Day Roulette on that morning were so numerous that, according to one unconfirmed report, the GPA for the entire student body dropped two tenths of a percent for the semester.
The anticipation was heightened this spring when Steven Madow, an enterprising Economics major, set up a web cam to survey Mills Lawn from dusk to dawn. Here is how the idea came to Steven, in his own words:
“I have a few reasons for starting this webcam. The original intent was to be able to alert people visually of when the fox had come out. I only had several people in mind, some of which were off campus and would have no way of knowing if the fox had come out. Secondly, in the most recent two years I have been able to roll over in my bed, look out my window, and see the fox on mills lawn. I wanted to share that experience with the community at large. I have had a lot of interest in technology and these sorts of things my whole life, and I kind of randomly decided to take on this small project. I realized that developing it would not take too much time, so I went forward with it.”
I call that a winning combination of cleverness and generosity on Steven’s part. The web cam site was eventually linked to the Rollins College webpage, the campus television network and to Facebook. Steven speculates that the site went viral because of the simplicity of the URL (FoxDayCam.com), the Facebook integration on the page which, whenever a posting was added, showed up on the poster’s Facebook profile and the Facebook homepage.
I hear that more than a few students believe that Steven deserves some kind of community service credit for his contribution to Fox Day monitoring this year.
Fox Day 2010 - Little Sofia gives a hug.
How should we evaluate Fox Day? On the negative side it can be disruptive of college business and in its "Roulette" permutation it can put a dent in student performance.
But the positives are that it can promote a sense of community and remind us that, while competitive striving has its place, so does serene contemplation which "knits up the ravel'd sleave of care." (These are Shakespeare's words. As you can see, he was a bit of a slacker where spelling is concerned.) My own ravel'd sleave was knit up during last week's Fox Day as I spent an idyllic day at Bok Tower Gardens with three of my favorite people, two of whom are pictured here.
From the Bok Tower Garden Facebook Site
Grace at the Garden
Tyler - Photographer in Chief
Finally, there is the inherent appeal of an enduring yet quirky tradition. So, on balance, I say, Long Live Fox Day.
John Sharkey, Jill Gable and Mary Wismar-Davis - Fox Day 2009
My British friends (two of them, at least) assure me that a character like Sarah Palin could never gain traction in English politics. Here’s my theory as to why this should be so: In the UK there is more respect for informed opinion than there is here. I think this explains a lot about American politics.
I have often heard that Americans are just plain dumb, but I don’t buy this explanation. At least not exactly. If being smart means being able to figure out your situation and responding to it appropriately, Americans do as well as anyone else. We do have certain emblems of achievement: the largest economy in the world; the best equipped and trained military in the world; the best record of achievement in Nobel Prizes; the best university system in the world -- to name a few.
So I’m not quite satisfied with the “Americans are just plain dumb” explanation. And yet choosing Sarah Palin as a leader is a festering symptom of some kind of mental lapse. So how do we explain her popularity with the Tea Partiers?
Back to the “respect for informed opinion” factor. Sarah Palin is well liked because she promotes the Tea Party narrative of America. According to this narrative, Americans have always been hard-working white individualists who don’t need the government and who give their children names like George and Jennifer -- not names like Consuelo, Enrique, Latifah or Shaquille.
According to the Tea Party version of history, America has been “taken away” by the wrong people, people who use the government to ruin the lives of hard-working white people by siphoning off unearned cash into their own pockets.
I know something about this because I received a number of angry responses to an article I wrote for the Ledger a couple weeks ago. Angry email responses provoked by my article alluded to the unfairness of government programs for poor people, and some of the responses specified the non-whiteness of those they imagined to be the main beneficiaries of these programs. When I replied to these angry writers pointing out that a lot of government programs have historically favored white people (the GI Bill as it was originally administered, the big tax breaks given to homeowners, tax-supported public universities, and so on) my critics wrote back – should I say spewed back – that these government programs only served deserving Americans.
The overt racial element in these angry emails parallels the verbal bigotry that Democratic legislators faced from the Tea Partiers during the Health Care vote. I really believe their shouts of “We want our country back!” really mean “We white people want our country back.” It is racism, not government spending per se, that motivates an awful lot of them.
As I’ve said before, if it was really government debt they were worried about, they would have denounced Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush who first plunged us into serious debt. If it were government handouts in general that they hated, they would be demanding an end to tax write-offs for homeowners, and the closing of public universities. But they aren’t. They are angry at welfare recipients and those who will benefit from the new health care bill, and, according to their distorted perceptions, these beneficiaries are mainly Black or Hispanic and may even be undocumented Hispanic.
Sarah Palin suits them because she is a relatively attractive white woman who massages their prejudices. Would it be possible for a Black woman or a Wise Latina Woman to play her role? In a word, no. First, because only people who have enjoyed the privileges of whiteness could spout the nonsense that Palin peddles, and secondly, because the racist factor means that for many Tea Partiers only white people fit the image of true Americans.
Yes, there is racism in Britain, but what seems special about Tea Party racism is its elaborate self delusion about government handouts constructed on a foundation of anti-intellectualism. And anti-intellectualism is one of those things that we Americans still do better than most.
Yes, the jig is up for me and Nergal. Glenn Beck is onto us. You will know what I mean if you take a look at the video link showing on my Facebook profile
On another note, I had a few extra minutes this morning to watch my favorite conservative on "Morning Joe" today. Yes, some of Joe Scarborough's ideas are misguided, but there are a couple of things you can say in his favor: First, he is not Rush Limbaugh, and second, he does not support the absolutely looney ideas that are prevalent among right-wingers these days(e.g., Obama is a Kenyan-born socialist Muslim and friend of terrorists). Also, let's add to these "nuttier than a Georgia fruitcake" allegations a few more conservative delusions: for instance, that Bush and Cheney were behind the 9/11 attacks and that FEMA has constructed concentration camps where right-thinking Americans will eventually be rounded up and confined. Yes, I'm not kidding, there are people out there who believe these things.
Anyway, Joe is wrong-headed in my opinion, but at least his head seems to contain an adequately functioning brain - which is why he is different from Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, or Glenn Beck (and I don't say this just because Beck blew the cover off our 3,000-year plan to enslave humanity - see note above).
I actually enjoy watching Joe, who does have a sense of humor. Plus, there is his sidekick, Mika Brzrzszvzezinski (note to self: check spelling before posting) who is Zbigniew's daughter and, besides being smart and easier on the eyes than Joe, adds a needed dimension to the program by playing the disapproving schoolmarm to Joe and the guys who are inclined to indulge in bawdy adolescent humor. This humor is funnier when a responsible adult is there to show how mature people should react to their bad behavior, and Mika fulfills this role nicely.
Today's Morning Joe was particularly good because it featured Elizabeth Warren, who has become the face of public interest in our fight against the Wall Street greedheads who got us into our current economic mess. Elizabeth Warren -- Harvard Professor, the Boston Globe's Bostonian of the Year and, according to Time Magazine, one of America's most influential people -- heads one of the few government institutions that stand between us and the voracious creeps who run Wall Street and who apparently won't be satisfied as long as any of us ordinary citizens still has a dollar or two in our wallet.
Good on ya, Professor Warren.
People are selfish. At the same time, people are generous. When an actor wins an Oscar, as Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock did last Sunday, you can see that they are thrilled about their win. Bridges in particular didn’t make the slightest effort to hide his excitement and why should he? He is a great actor and, from what I can tell, a good guy who Academy voters genuinely like.
But, while I see nothing wrong in being overtly thrilled at winning an Oscar, I don’t think there’s any way to deny that being thrilled is selfish. Having won means you are well regarded (narcissistic high!), you will be more famous than ever for a little while (ditto!), your name will be inscribed in Hollywood history (ditto again), and you can charge more for your future roles (cf. the Bible on “the root of all evil”).
But while selfishness is a design feature of human nature, so is generosity. Or maybe a better way to put this is to say mutual dependence is so basic to us that it is like the air we breathe. We could not survive were we all simply selfish. Without this mutual dependence we would be facing the “war of all against all” imagined by Thomas Hobbes, and our lives truly would be, as he predicted, “nasty, brutish and short.” There are people who can themselves be described as “nasty, brutish and short,” but since I myself am not at all tall, I will have little more to say about this. Anyway, Hobbes was referring to our lives, not our former vice president or any other specific individuals, when he conjured up that famous phrase.
What I’m getting at is that our lives are so completely bound up with each other that a Hobbesian war of “all against all” is simply an impossibility. Yes, we do often and in some ways compete against each other, but we cooperate with each other much more routinely.
Even the Oscars are a ritual of cooperation. The organization of the Academy Awards ceremony depends on thousands of cooperating participants. Even when the “all against all” aspect is emphasized – as when the competing candidates are listed just before the winner is announced – group-oriented rituals are followed. I suppose it would add to the drama if, just before the envelope was opened, a fiercely competitive candidate were to bolt for the stage, grab the envelope and declare himself winner. But nobody has ever done this, not even Harvey Weinstein.
I’m just saying that our lives are completely enveloped in cooperativeness, and yet we talk as though America is an arena of endless competition.
Part of the reason for all this “competition” talk is political. Conservatives often preach that competition (sometimes described as “the magic of the marketplace”) can solve all our problems. So competition is talked up in the corporate-controlled press. And in America virtually all of our news is corporate-controlled, so it is talked up a lot.
The right wing has its reasons for making us think life is all about competition. One reason is that those who control wealth can claim that since, in competitive arenas, the strong and smart get rich, it would be wrong to ask people with wealth to pay a relatively large proportion of their income to support society – hence Steve Forbes’ touting of “the flat tax” and George W. Bush claiming (dishonestly) that rich people are rich because “they earned” their wealth.
Any introductory sociology course worth its tuition will reveal that most of the wealth held by the super-rich in the U.S. is not earned but inherited. Bush’s certainly was. Steve Forbes was also born to wealth. Neither of them got rich by “earning” wealth, and neither did the great majority of those who are rich.
What conservatives like Bush and Forbes seem to imagine is that had they been born the children of, say, impoverished Mexican-American migrant workers, they would nevertheless, because of their outstanding personal qualities, have undoubtedly grown up to be multimillionaires. They are, in other words, full of caca.
Actually they may not be that stupid. They may simply be monstrously greedy. But I choose to give them the benefit of the doubt here by judging them to be idiots.
The Tea Partiers are (consciously or unconsciously) in league with these guys. The big message that the TPers keep promoting (other than that Obama is a socialist) is that our government is accumulating too much debt and we citizens shouldn’t have to pay the taxes we pay.
OK, just as an aside, I would have a lot more confidence in the TPers had they taken to the streets in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan began piling up unprecedented and shockingly humongous debts. Also, they might have taken to the streets to cheer Bill Clinton for undoing the deficit damage Reagan had done and balancing the budget in the 1990s. And, again, they might have raised a ruckus when George W. Bush, with his reckless, pro-rich-people tax cuts ran up the debt again in the past decade. But they didn’t. Only now, when Barack Obama, for absolutely necessary reasons, increases the debt, do the TPers decide to protest the red ink. It obviously isn’t the debt that concerns them, so I have to wonder what they are really up to.
Anyway, the “lower our taxes” part of their protest is exactly what Forbes, Bush and other born millionaires like to see. If the government has its hands tied this will help the super-rich (who are mainly corporate fat cats) get richer. This is because there are really only two major sources of power in America today: One is the political power that depends on the voting process (aka democracy or “government”) and the other is corporate power that serves the interests of people like Bush and Forbes. If the government’s power is reduced (i.e., if democracy is somewhat weakened), then corporations can have their way with us more freely than ever.
There is no third way. We can depend on the power of elected officials (hoping that those officials have not been totally bought off by corporate money), or we can put our fates in the hands of Wall Street bankers and companies like A.I.G., Halliburton, ExxonMobil, etc.
The conservatives and their Tea Party supporters are fighting to increase corporate power. And part of the justification for this goal is the idea (the dream, really) that says open competition will bring everything into balance, ensuring that only deserving souls will be rewarded. So deregulate everything, cut everyone’s taxes and just let all that competitive energy loose. But what would happen if we did this? In fact we actually did this once before – in the 1920s when conservative Republican president Calvin Coolidge said “the business of America is business.” To find out what happens when government regulations are whittled away and competition goes wild, just take a look at the 1930s that followed directly from Coolidge’s policies. Or, don’t go that far back; just take a look at what happened on Wall Street in 2008 as a consequence of banking deregulation.
I agree that competition has its place, but only after a basic system of social cooperation has been tended to. Right now this means sticking it to those Wall Street bankers who keep rewarding themselves with billions because they are sure (like Bush and Forbes are) that their superior natures entitle them to all that loot. Let’s hope that our representatives in Congress have not been so completely bought off by Wall Street money that they are capable of doing the necessary sticking. If they aren’t, it’s time to rewrite our campaign financing laws so that at least some of our elected officials can find a way to do right by us voters instead of always catering to that noxious swarm of greedy, self-deluded financial backers.
About five years ago the Orlando Sentinel ran a story about Harry T. Moore, who, with his wife Harriette, was murdered in 1951 by white bigots who placed a bomb under his house in Mims, Florida.
OK, nobody was ever convicted of this double murder, so how can I identify the race or attitude of those who committed the crime? I just can. And I am willing to be sued by anyone who, on behalf of white bigots everywhere, feels they have been grievously wronged by this accusation.
One of the great social victories of the past fifty years has been the transformation of attitudes, particularly in the South, to the point where racists have to dissemble and hide behind double talk in order to avoid disgrace.
Back in the 1950s and early 1960s my high school friend Tom would spend summers in Oxford, Mississippi, and he would tell me about radio ads he heard there in which white politicians pandered for votes by promising, if elected, to keep “the Coloreds” in their place.
In the late 1960s, when I was in college in New Orleans, I earned some pocket money by substitute teaching in Jefferson Parish. That parish (they don’t have “counties” in Louisiana) had been forced by federal law to integrate its school system, and as they complied, they “resegregated” the schools along gender lines, sending females to one campus and males to another. I think a lot of the bigotry then and now has to do with fear of sexual interactions.
In those days you could dial a telephone number in New Orleans and get a recording by the White Citizens Council that warned against “the mongrelization of the races” that was taking place as a result of civil rights legislation. My friends and I passed the number around thinking the phone message was hilariously asinine. We were mostly a white bunch and I wonder if the humor would have been suffocated by the awfulness of the mentality behind the recording had we experienced the kinds of things Harry and Harriette Moore had to face.
Back to the Sentinel article: Once I read it, I was so inspired by the Moores’ courage and sacrifice that I clipped the accompanying picture of Harry and have had it on my desk ever since. I am drawn to people like him who know what is right and just keep doing it even when their lives are in jeopardy. Here’s the picture.
At the time I thought it was a dreadful injustice that Harry Moore remained such an obscure figure, despite his work and his heroism. But now his place in history may be ensured after all. A big step in the right direction was made by Tallahassee writer Ben Green whose book, Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, America’s First Civil Rights Martyr, came out in 2005. I only learned of Green’s book last week when he was on campus at the invitation of our own Professor Julian Chambliss as part of the Jack Lane Colloquium series. I also learned at that time that a Harry T. and Harriette V. Memorial Park has been established in Mims. It’s on my list of places to visit in the near future.
I’ve always been interested in why people do the things they do; that’s why I got into anthropology. Part of the answer, of course, is culture. What you learn from the people around you results in your speaking a certain language with a certain accent and so much else about your beliefs and behavior. But why, given that I spent my late childhood and teenage years going to segregated schools in a small southern town steeped in bigotry, did I always sympathize with the civil rights activists? Not all of my classmates and neighbors did – that’s for sure. My attitude must have something to do with culture. Maybe it was a consequence of the fact that my parents were northerners or that my father (in particular) was so serious about fair play.
I could make the question bigger and ask, “Why have Northerners been somewhat less attached to hard-core bigotry than Southerners over the past couple of centuries?”
Obviously Yankees were not sprinkled with some kind of pixie dust that made them morally superior to Southerners on this issue. Probably the best answer has to do with material factors:
1. Cotton and tobacco grew better in the South than in the North.
2. These particular crops can be very profitably grown if a legal-political system can be put in place that allows working people to be forced into slave labor.
3. People who benefit from such a grossly unjust system while claiming to be “freedom-loving Americans” or “good Christians” have to heavily delude themselves about racial differences in order to live with the contradiction.
4. Voila! Heavy-handed bigotry takes root.
There are no doubt more sophisticated explanations for all this, but I may have to wait for some more Jack Lane Colloquia to get them.
In the meantime we still have an awful lot of white conservatives, not all of them Southerners, denouncing “big government” just as the slaveholders and their neighbors did when Abraham Lincoln, used “big government” to force private entrepreneurs in the Deep South to give up slavery. These contemporary anti-big-government people rarely acknowledge any racist motivations behind their politics. They also seem to overlook the obvious connection between the slave-holding regions of the Old South and “red-state” voting patterns of today. In other words, the self delusion lives on.
I’m not trying to indict all Southerners or all conservatives here. But I am good and tired of people on the political right who, with barely concealed prejudices, claim to be arguing for some worthy ideal like “freedom” as they attack those government programs that have brought some measure of fairness to what once were grossly racist institutions.
I believe things have improved on the anti-racist front, though clearly not enough. So for now, as the battle continues, I’d like to take this opportunity to offer a word of thanks to Professor Chambliss, to author Ben Green, and, above all, to the indomitable spirit of Brother Harry and Sister Harriette Moore.
This morning I offered to forgo my customary walk and drive Darla to campus. She hates driving so much that in gratitude she asked, “Why would you do that, Husband?” Of course the only answer I could offer was, “Because I have a capacity for self-sacrifice that others can hardly comprehend.” I think I may have overplayed my hand.
But actually, I never minded driving. In my youth I sometimes imagined that if the academic thing didn’t work out, I could become a long-haul truck driver. I sort of liked the idea of seeing the country and, what with Dylan, the Dead, Clapton and other greats on my portable cassette player, I figured I could get by fairly well coasting through Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, or Dripping Springs (aka Drippin’ Sprangs), Texas, listening to my favorites. These are real places that I remember driving through when I lived out west.
I think guys take to driving more easily than do femmes, and this is partly because of a unique quality prominent in many young male drivers: idiocy. Just speaking for myself, I can say that I am embarrassed about some of the dumb things I did in my younger years when my car was above all an instrument of power and independence to me. The absolute dumbest move I can recall happened on Route 90 in the Florida panhandle. Interstate 10 had not been built in the 1960s when I was going to college in New Orleans, so I would take old Highway 90 on my way home in those days. One time, I think it might have been Easter break, I was driving at night on it with my friend Jay and his roommate in the car. They were both New Yorkers.
Since 90 was a two laner, I got stuck behind a slowpoke and decided I would break out and pass him or her when the first opportunity came. But no obvious opportunity appeared because an endless series of hills obscured my line of sight. So, I calculated that I could pull out and pass when I could see no oncoming headlights rising over the next hill. Pretty soon I made my move and pulled out, but I quickly got back in my lane when oncoming headlight beams suddenly became visible over the crest of the next hill. Then there came the flashing lights on the Highway Patrol car that had been right behind me all the while.
OK, so I was pulled over and got a ticket (deservedly) from the friendly but otherwise merciless officer. When the transaction was over, my two New Yorker friends started laughing at me. “I didn’t know you could speak southern!” said Jay. Apparently I had slipped into Florida dialect in a Stockholm-syndrome kind of reaction as I pleaded my case to the patrolman. I had not been aware of my own strategic, yet futile, linguistic code switching. So I learned two lessons that day: As much as I liked driving cross-country, I clearly had the capacity to kill myself (and others) doing it; and, I can actually speak country-southern style if I need to. So I guess I have to face the fact that I really am part redneck, even though my early childhood was spent …. in New Jersey!
These days I'm busy writing an anthropology article for a conference, so I'm not spending time updating my new blog. But I thought I could at least offer an "oldie" from about a decade ago, an article I wrote for The Ledger in the spring of 2001 when George Bush's character flaws seemed merely a joking matter rather than the recipe for full blown disaster that they turned out to be.
My article appeared in the New York Times-owned Ledger on May 17, 2001. Interestingly, exactly ten days later in the actual New York Times, Maureen Dowd published a piece featuring a number of similarities to mine. Dowd's article has a sleeping George Bush suddenly sitting "bolt upright" when he is visited by a tall, craggy ghost who chides him for his failings. I'll post first my article and then an excerpt from Dowd's.
How Would Bush Explain Self to Lincoln?
By R.L. Moore
The Ledger, May 17, 2001
President Bush’s coy and reticent approach to governance has led to some wild speculations about the key events that are shaping his political philosophy.
In order to add to these speculations, I offer the following account of a White House incident reported by my associate, Carson Fulano. The incident occurred in the middle of the night one week ago when President Bush was awakened in his bedroom by the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.
President Bush is said to have sat bolt upright in bed exclaiming, “Wow! A ghost! And one who was a president just like me, except in the 18th century!”
“Nineteenth century, “corrected Abe.
“Whatever.” Dubya replied. “Anyway, why are you here?”
Abe explained that he wanted to see how the Republic was faring. “I have always believed,” he said, “that our great nation was destined to be blessed with leaders of increasing wisdom and magnanimity as the American people refine the machinery of democracy.” Then, looking closely at President Bush he asked, “What do you see as the basis of American freedom?”
Dubya: “Well, I believe freedom means less government.”
Abe: “But you do understand, do you not, that democracy is a quality found in government and not in private enterprise?”
Dubya: “What I understand is that we need to get the government off our backs. So I have a plan to weaken the government through privatization. For instance, I plan to privatize operations right here in the White House.”
Abe: “Are you saying you want to get the government off the back of the White House?”
Dubya: “Sure. Why not start at the top? We have found a corporate donor who will pay for all White House operations. This will save the taxpayers a bundle and Mr. Cheney says we’ll soon get used to the name ‘ExxonMobil White House.’”
Abe: “It may be that there is a profundity to your thinking that I’m failing to grasp. Perhaps you can tell me what great crisis you have faced that forced you back on the resources of your own character?”
Dubya: “Well we had an exciting election last year. Brother Jeb and I both showed we have character by being brave enough to stand up to the voters of Florida.”
Abe gave young Bush a solemn, disapproving look, so Dubya quickly spoke up: “Come on, Top Hat, you have no idea what it’s like to be in a tough election. At one point I even had to round up a gang of Republicans to harass the ballot counters in Miami, just to make sure democracy didn’t get out of hand. I mean, what would you have done?”
Abe: “Not that.”
Dubya: “But I wanted to be president. How could I let a bunch of ballots stop me?”
Abe threw another dark look toward young Bush and was about to speak when Dubya again piped up: “Anyway Old Timer, one thing you can say about my character is that I understand the meaning of the word generousness. All the guys who gave me money to run for office are getting paid back handsomely through my tax cuts.”
Abe: “So you see the office of the president as an investment opportunity?”
Dubya: “Well, yes. Is that wrong?”
Abe: “I always thought that my first duty, after preserving the union, was to see the needs of our most distressed citizens. Does your tax plan do that?”
Dubya: “You sound kind of liberal, Top Hat. Are you sure you’re a Republican?”
Abe: “Well, I…Oh, never mind. I’ve seen enough to understand what’s going on here. I’ll depart now, but I’ll come back in about four years.”
Dubya: “Don’t rush off, Scarecrow. I want to explain what I’ve done to change the environment.”
A mournful sobbing is heard that gradually fades into the background.
Dubya (to himself): “Boy that old dude is sure hard to please. There must be a Republican ghost from the past who would appreciate what I’m doing. But who could it be? Whoever he is, I wish he’d pay me a visit.”
Concerning other ghostly appearances in President Bush’s sleeping quarters, I can only say that my office has received reports of a second visit within the past few days. I have been unable to determine who that ghost was, though he reportedly got along extremely well with President Bush who addressed the visitor as “Shadows.”
Immediately following that second visitation, President Bush declared that the GOP had outgrown its title as “the Party of Lincoln.” From now on the official designation will be “the Party of Nixon.”
___________
Now, here is an excerpt from Dowd's May 27 New York Times piece, which she titled "No Whiff of Poof." In Dowd's article the ghost is Bush's grandfather, Senator Prescott Bush, who appears just as "W" is “safely tucked away in the Aspen cottage for his nap.”
A deep voice pierced his pout.
"George," the voice intoned, "you know I always leave the room when anyone utters a vulgarity."
W. shivered. He recognized the Brahmin tones and unmangled syntax of his late grandfather, Prescott Bush, who always made him wear a tie at dinner. The craggy 6-foot-4 specter was frowning at him from beneath bushy eyebrows. He looked like a Roman senator, his gray hair swept back in a pompadour style and parted in the middle. He wore a double-breasted gray suit and shoes polished to a high shine.
Prescott Bush was just as full of Episcopalian rectitude as a ghost as he had been as a Connecticut senator and Wall Street banker.
W. reflexively bolted upright, hiding his plastic cup of Cheez Doodles under the covers.
"George," Prescott said, "we need to talk about noblesse oblige."
W. got squinty. "That's near Sierra Leone, right?"
…etc…
Coincidence or "the sincerest form of flattery"? You decide.
