-Caveat Lector-
As Elaine used to say on Seinfeld..." OH MY GOD!"
Is this the best our elites can offer up from among
their progeny??? If it is, then I have found the solution
to the age old problem of domination by elites.
Let them continue interbreeding. One more generation of
Bushes, or Gores, or Kennedys, and we'll be home free.
Free at last. Free at last. Thank you Darwin.
Free at last.
Nurev
=================
October 9, 2000
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Why Dubya Can't Read
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I once knew a fairly intelligent man who
disconcerted me one day by
denouncing the arbitrary domination of
the then-Soviet Union by a
sinister-sounding body named "the
Politurbo." Allowance could be made in
his case; not everybody understood the abbreviations of
"agitprop" and the crude origins of Com-speak. Had the
term been spelled out as "Political Bureau" I am sure he
would have got there easily in the end. But what
unhorsed me at the time was this: He must have seen
the word "Politburo" in print many times, and also heard
it spoken very often, without ever registering the
connection.
The term for this failure of mental word-processing is
dyslexia, and it can occur in mild and severe forms. I
used to have the job of tutoring a dyslexic child, and I
know something about the symptoms. So I kicked
myself hard when I read the profile of Governor George
W. Bush, by my friend and colleague Gail Sheehy, in this
month's Vanity Fair. All those jokes and cartoons and
websites about his gaffes, bungles and malapropisms?
We've been unknowingly teasing the afflicted. The poor
guy is obviously dyslexic, and dyslexic to the point of
near-illiteracy. Numerous experts and friends of the
dynasty give Sheehy their considered verdict to this
effect.
The symptoms and clues have been staring us in the
face for some time. Early in the campaign, Bush said
that he did indeed crack the odd book and was even at
that moment absorbed by James Chace's biography of
Dean Acheson. But when asked to report anything that
was in the damn volume, the governor pulled up an
empty net. His brother Neil is an admitted dyslexic. His
mother has long been a patron of various foundations
and charities associated with dyslexia. How plain it all
now seems.
The rhetorical and linguistic train wrecks in the speeches
of Reagan and Bush Senior were of a different quality,
arising variously from hysterical lying, brutish ignorance,
senile decay and cultural deprivation. But the problem
was chiefly syntactical. The additional humiliations of
Dubya derive from utter failures of word recognition. A
man who has somehow got this far in politics and refers
to "tacular" weapons is unclear (or do I mean nuclear?)
on the concept. In free-trade language, tariffs and
barriers are not necessarily conterminous, but in no
circumstance are they "terriers." To use "vile" for "viable"
might look like misfortune, but to employ "inebriating"
for "enthralling" looks like carelessness, especially in
someone with his booze and cocaine record. Bush
doesn't want our enemies to "hold us hostile"; I must
say I agree with what I'm sure he didn't mean to say.
Confusing "handcuffs" with "cufflinks" might be a yuppie
slip; at any rate it presumably doesn't mean softness on
crime. As for "Reading is the basics of all learning," well,
there you are.
Does any of this matter? Of course it does. Bush has
already claimed with hand on heart that he personally
scrutinized the death-row appeals of more than a
hundred condemned wretches in the shocking Texas
prison system; we now have to face the fact that he not
only did not review the clemency petitions but could not
have read them even if he wanted to. Aides now
remember the times they presented the governor or the
candidate with that crucial briefing paper, only to see him
toss it on the desk and demand a crisp, verbal, "bottom
line" summary of its contents. Decisive, right? Wrong.
I know from my teaching experience that nature very
often compensates the dyslexic with a higher IQ or some
grant of intuitive intelligence. If this is true for Bush it
hasn't yet become obvious; his Texas chief of staff, Clay
Johnson, told Gail Sheehy that the attention span of his
boss is, not to euphemize matters overmuch,
somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen minutes. In other
words, and as far as we know, he has only the downside
of his difficulty, which is attention-deficit disorder. In the
high noon of the age of information, the Republican
Party packages and presents a provincial ignoramus who
can neither read nor write. Woof.
But now here's another amazing thing. Nelson
Rockefeller was dyslexic, though nobody knew it until
after he'd become Vice President. Ronald Reagan's
neurons and synapses were being devoured by
Alzheimer's from at least... well, I'd say 1982 from
personal observation, though experts differ. Bill Clinton
was understood by some of the closest of his circle,
including his awful wife, to be a pathological liar and
sexual delinquent when he was still lucky enough to be
governor of Arkansas. Usually, these and many other
disqualifications, like Nixon's alcoholism, await the
patient, too-late forensic attention of the court
historians. Yet here's a man whose aides and flacks are
visibly white-lipped every time he opens his mouth, and
who should be seeking remedial care but is instead
seeking the presidential therapy that he doesn't need,
and nobody says a word. Nobody had the poor taste to
follow up Gail Sheehy's findings.
Ah, but Bush has a disability.... Can that be it? From
"compassionate conservatism" to compassion for the
conservative? Well, I'm ready to feel compassion for him.
I want him to get all the help he needs (which will
probably involve him in emulating his flabbergasting
running mate and moving his official residence to
another and more compassionate state). But I think, in
presidential terms, we should leave this child back and
let him catch up in his own special way at some later
date.
Meanwhile, the press and the Democrats should either
stop citing and mocking the flubs or come right out and
say what they mean. A danger of heartlessness, even of
callousness, exists. Seeking to explain away his wastrel
life and his obnoxious manner--nagging problems that
persisted until his mid-40s--Bush invites us to believe
that he mutated into finer personhood after having a
personal encounter with God. The pious toads at the
head of the Democratic ticket are full of unction at this
and any other manifestation of hypocrisy. In a farcical
recent moment, Bush contradicted his own mother, who
claimed he'd always read his Bible as a youngster, by
telling the Washington Post that he'd read no such
thing. So--what if he had meant to say all along that
he'd found a personal "dog"? The time to clear this up is
now.
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============================
-- CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMEN --
JUST VOTE FOR A CORPORATION
============================
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