Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Bush 43 to Bush 41: "Daddy, what's a neocon?"
I heard something the other day that stuck in my head. I was half-listening to the Diane Rehm show about Donald Rumsfeld, when one of the guests, Andrew Cockburn, related an anecdote that I could hardly believe: that during the election of 2004, George W. Bush was visiting his father for a bit of a break, and in the course of the meeting he asked his father "What's a neocon?"
Huh? I couldn't have possibly heard that right, could I? W couldn't have been so clueless as to not know what the driving force behind the debacle in Iraq was, could he???
I mean, I'm as willing as anyone here to believe that W is capable of just about anything, but still. I had to have heard that wrong, right?
Nope. Listen to the Diane Rehm show at the above link (free downloads available), starting at about 34:50.
And Timothy Noah wrote about this in Slate on Feb 23, quoting from Cockburn's new book about Rumsfeld:
Notwithstanding this episode, Bush 43 still sometimes drew on his father's wide knowledge of the world. Though he refused to read newspapers, he was aware of criticism that his administration had been excessively beholden to a particular clique, and wanted to know more about them. One day during that holiday, according to friends of the family, 43 asked his father, "What's a neocon?"
"Do you want names, or a description?" answered 41.
Noah goes on to ponder whether or not W really was asking the question because he didn't know what the word meant. But in the interview with Diane Rehm it is clear that Cockburn thought that this was the case.
Is the story true? Cockburn thinks it is.
What do you think? Is W really that fucking clueless?
(Cross posted to dKos.)
Jim Downey
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ask bush what "liberal"
ask bush what "liberal" means-
his definition would be a hippy, faggot, jew, nigger, pot smoking, latte drinking democrat
the actual definition of the word is generous, open-minded, progressive
the fact is almost all people have qualities that fit the definition of a liberal and a conservative
You're overthinking this...
It seems to me that the most likely explanation is that he was simply ignorant of the term 'neocon'. It seems unlikely that he is unaware of his political beliefs. More likely he just wasn't familiar with the term and didn't have the intelligence to think through the lexicography. It's not like he asked what a 'Conservative' was.
I'm less concerned about his ignorance of Washington slang than the more prominent examples of his lack of intelligence. We cannot fall prey to the media's depiction of someones faults. It's like when Dan Quayle spelled potato with an 'e', that had been the original spelling and the dictionary lists either as acceptable. Yet he was crucified in the media. Let's take these morons on in meaningful debates, not whether or not they used (or knew) a particular slang term.
-jesse
can understand this
Is it possible Bush doesn't know what a Neocon is? Yes. It's fully possible to be within a certain political group but either not know of that group or know of it but not considder yourself part of it.
With Bush I'm not terribly surprised that he didn't know what a neocon was, he probably just felt he was the voice for the mainstream religious conservative.
A teacher recently wrote an article in the local paper with a very similar situation, that many of her class actually fit the definition of a feminist, but weren't aware of it for a number of reasons. Primarilly these were a steriotype of feminists that doesn't neccessarilly fit the reality and the lack of topics concerning feministm covered in the media.
Humiliated
41 has got to be humiliated that he sired 43.