Saturday, January 3, 2009

Show Me The Books

W is just about gone and there is a coming glut of books and articles on the grotesqueries of the past eight years, but something has come up recently that must be commented upon now. Karl Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal that he and W had yearly contests to see who could read the most books and that, while Turd Blossom always won, W had read roughly 100 books per year since 2004. I'm sorry, but this is impossible to accept. If one is a reader it is soon apparent to an audience: book titles are mentioned, writers are quoted, vocabulary reflects experience with literacy and refined expression. None of these qualities are evident in W.
He does well if he speaks two or three coherent sentences in a row. Nothing about him suggests that he is a serious reader and this outrageous last-minute attempt by TB to to turn his life-long project into a thinking man is reminiscent of the scene in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein where the created slug comes out on stage in a tuxedo and sings Puttin' on the Ritz, with a hilarious mispronunciation of Ritz. The audience laughs, the monster reverts to type, and his rampage sends people screaming.

Who needs Oliver Stone? Mel Brooks nailed W and TB decades ago.

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