Laura Bush: Dull, Narcissistic or Just Plain Conservative?

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7115

Laura Bush: Dull, Narcissistic or Just Plain Conservative?
by Matthew Hubbard | Apr 28 2007


"No one suffers more than their president and, uh… and uh I do."


snip//

The first option is that she wasn‘t thinking. Her mouth started moving and what came out came out. Being fair, we all say stupid stuff sometimes.

The second option is that she has no feelings whatsoever. The thought experiment I asked her to might be an impossible task for her. Empathy might be completely beyond her capacity. Humans like this certainly exist, and not all of them are psycho killers.

A third option is that she is a run-of-the-mill modern conservative, the pissed off people, many of them at the top of the heap in America, who actually buy the nonsense argument that they are an oppressed class. How can the people on Fox Noise Channel sell the idea that the phrase “Happy Holidays” is an attack on Christianity? How can a third-string academic like Ward Churchill become a sign of the apocalypse? How can Giuliani act like the Republicans will keep up safe and the Democrats will put our lives at risk given the record of the last six years? Because the “just plain folks” have been indoctrinated that their changing way of life is not a natural consequence of the modern world, but instead a deliberate attack by the enemies of all that is right and good, which in the conservative world means the liberals.

Of course, there doesn’t have to be a single reason for Laura Bush to have said such a stupid and insensitive thing. Beyond dullness, vanity or misplaced martyrdom, it could be the drugs she takes to keep that vapid look on her face. Like drug interaction, it could be a combination of any of the possible explanations above. It might have even been a talking point her speechwriters gave her, where they calculated the possibility of whether the interviewer would call her bluff, and perhaps even had an answer prepared in case Ann Curry couldn’t hide her contempt.

Whatever the reason, it should be made clear to the First Lady and her husband that outside the bottom third of the population that still supports their incompetent and evil regime, the lies and nonsense they spew are only making matters worse. Every idiot comment by this dying regime brings resolve to those who want to send them and their vicious belief system into political oblivion.

[Fridays Child]

1. There must be a clip...

[NYC]

11. You Tube.

It's still loading for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99k3KtD3g0

[Buzz Clik]

12. What's with all the whispering? Was this recorded in a high school library?

Or do the muted tones somehow invoke the (false) impression of sincerity?

[NYC]

15. Solemnity and sincerity.

That's my guess. Maybe reverent, too. What sells well when people are dying and you really don't care?

[acmavm]

26. What would she and her crazy husband do if they outlawed the word hard?

[NYC]

27. They'd find it hard.

:)

[acmavm]

31. hee hee

[eleny]

2. The unholy trinity of such personalities

[jobycom]

3. I think she's the typical abused spouse of an alcoholic.

Has that same PTSS look about her as shell-shocked soldiers. Looks afraid to express her opinion for fear of what will happen to her if George finds offense in it. Just smiles as unobtrusively as she can.

[madrchsod]

6. you are right

any ounce of compassion has been drained from her years ago...

[valerief]

4. You forgot HIGH. nt

[babylonsister]

7. The writer took that into account:

"it could be the drugs she takes to keep that vapid look on her face. Like drug interaction, it could be a combination of any of the possible explanations above."

[valerief]

30. Ah, thanks. Missed that. I feel as stupid as Laura now. nt

[Fridays Child]

5. Found it: Huffington Post has the video.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/04/25/laura-bush-no-one-suffe_n_46804.html

[babylonsister]

14. Thanks for finding that; I hadn't seen it. nt

[Cha]

8. THis needs to go to the Front Page

so it won't get buried here!

Thank you babylonsister and Matthew Hubbard of smirkingchimp for writing this..I was repeating this to my sister on Thursday night..I couldn't get over that even laura bush would be this freakin' insensitive.

"Here’s how I would have put it. “Mrs. Bush, let’s do a thought experiment. Close your eyes and imagine that one of your daughters isn’t coming home for Thanksgiving. She isn’t coming because she’s dead, she died in Iraq. She won’t be at Thanksgiving or Christmas or any family get together ever again, because she died in Iraq.”

“Now open your eyes. Here’s the reality; both of your daughters are alive and well, and there is no chance of them dying in Iraq. That’s the real world.”

“Which felt worse: The time with your eyes closed or the time with your eyes open?”

Of course, she’d be pissed as hell when she opened her eyes, like I would care two cents about her feelings after she had made such a ridiculous comment. But how does she even think to say such a thing?"




I would say that the "3rd option" is plain ol' "FASCISM", though. Conservative to me is a good word. Conserve the Environment, conserve our military, conserve the treasury...

The only thing these guys are in step with is "bush morals".

Scott Peck said, "Evil is the absence of truth"..so you do the math.

[stellanoir]

9. She has all the money in the world.

Still she persists in wearing the equivilant of gunnie sacks

/caddy/bitchieness

yet no one is suffering more than she and her hubby.

Yikes.

I don't even know where to start with her over medicated hypocrisy.

Yikes.

[stellanoir]

10. She has all the money in the world.

Still she persists in wearing the equivalent of gunnie sacks

/caddy/bitchiness

yet no one is suffering more than she and her hubby.

Yikes.

I don't even know where to start with her over medicated hypocrisy.

Yikes.

[shaniqua6392]

13. She is an enabling bitch

with an insipid smile. She gives real women a bad name. Case closed.

[Berry Cool]

16. Here's my theory.

Pain is relative. There are severe forms of it, and there are milder forms of it. Our understanding of pain is shaped by the forms of it that we, personally, have experienced. We tend to believe that whatever pain we have experienced is severely painful, while either belittling or preferring not to think too much about the pain of others.

In order to understand someone else's pain experience, we need three things:

1. A pretty broad spectrum of pain experiences of our own to draw upon, and a good, unrepressed memory of them.

2. The ability to picture, truly picture, ourselves in the shoes of others experiencing pain that we have never ourselves personally known, and to live in that picture unjudgmentally without seeking someone or something to blame for the pain--unless it is, rightfully, ourselves, in which case we need to take responsibility for it. In other words, we need to acknowledge that other people exist; that their pain experiences are as valid as ours; that we can cause them pain; and that it is wrong to do so. (This is something sociopaths cannot do.)

3. An ability to stay in the moment with the pained person, without projecting the pained person into an imaginary painless future. (When you're in pain, only the present exists.)

For some people, though, trying to stay in other people's pain and understand it, in the moment, is too threatening and upsetting. Not only because it hurts, and reminds them of their own vulnerability, but because they realize that they themselves may be either a direct or indirect cause of it. Rather than acknowledge that possibility, or in some cases the outright truth of it, they must deflect by either laying the blame on the victim, or on those who try to blame them--suggesting that being blamed for another person's pain is more painful than the pain itself.

This is why so many conservatives say things like what Laura Bush said. Wealth shelters people from a lot of pain, and so does privilege (even the simple privilege of being white and Christian in America). When you're talking wealthy white American Christians, you're talking people who have been sheltered from a whole lot of pain they might otherwise have known, and who may have, at least indirectly, caused pain for others. Lacking some of the very painful experiences they might have otherwise had, and not recognizing the pain they have caused others, some of them blow entirely out of proportion any pain experience they DO have, and belittle the pain experiences they have NOT had.

A clerk said "Happy Holidays" to them in a store? It's not an attempt to be inclusive and non-offensive--it's a War on Christmas! Some college professor somewhere says America deserved 9/11? It's not enough to say "I believe he is wrong, and here's why." He is EVIL and must be kicked off campus! Someone else blames their husband for sending other people's kids off to die in a war premised on a pack of lies? Well, how do you think it makes THEM feel--hearing their own husband berated like that, called a killer and a thug? Well??

This is where Laura Bush is. She literally cannot allow herself to stand in the shoes of a mother who has lost a child to this war, because that would mean having to look at what her own husband did to cause it. If she does that, her whole life will unravel before it becomes whole again.

Sure, it seems totally crazy and illogical to us that she should say something like this. But given her place in life, the only other choice she has is a choice no woman in her place would ever make. Namely, waking up to the nightmare she is living in, and getting out.

It's much, much easier to go on with the status quo, and try to twist things so that it looks as if YOU are the one who is oppressed and unfairly put upon, than to open yourself up to the pain of others in a way that might force you to confront your own complicity in their pain.

[joneschick]

17. beautifully stated BerryBush

why haven't I met you before? :hi:

[srulifsonmiles]

18. Brilliant , and let's not forget that she herself has killed...

... someone (a lover!) in 1963, when her daddy was sheriff in Texas, by running a stop sign; no charges filed.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/laura.asp
http://www.bartcop.com/pickles.htm

etc!

Is it buried emotion? Let's at least hope projection is next! Eeeeewie, that's ugly, but better than we face!

Could be... Thanks, BerryB; that's one of the most considerate comments I've read on the web in a long while.

Love, peace & understanding.

[Berry Cool]

21. Of course. And if many of us had done the same thing she did,

we would have been up Shit Creek without a paddle. We would have been stuck not only with the agonizing pain of knowing we were responsible for someone else's death, and that even worse, it was someone we knew and at least once liked; we would also have to pay the legal and social consequences for that action.

Laura paid only part of the price for her teenage driving mistake (and yes, I do believe it was a mistake). Surely she paid the emotional consequences and the kind of social consequences anyone in school might pay for having been known to be responsible for the death of another student, especially a popular one. Under other circumstances, though, she could have been charged with a crime, and possibly even done jail time. Also, were she a different type of person, the pain might have harmed her future life--damaged her emotionally such that she never recovered and punished herself by making poor life choices that resulted in her own misery or an early death.

I'm not saying that would have been a good thing. But I'm not sure the way she's living her life now is a good thing, either. I think Laura paid a heavy price in another way for what she did. Maybe she felt so guilty that she sought to find some way to forget and pretend it never happened to her at all. Maybe she threw herself into a social whirl in which her past would be forgotten. Or maybe she, unconsciously, chose to marry a man she knew had skeletons in his own closet, a less than savory past of his own, because she knew he'd never be able to hold her past over her head the way a less flawed man might.

They say water seeks its own level. Maybe when you're a young woman with something to hide, you naturally gravitate to a young man with something to hide. Interesting fact: when Laura and George Bush first met, it was about a year after he'd had his license suspended in Maine for drunk driving. They married three months after they met. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if part of the attraction was that neither one could really be too judgmental of the other when it came to the biggest, most shameful mistake they'd committed in life to date. And that no one else in their social circle could relate to them quite that same way.

Maybe that's what continues to keep Laura and George together: a mutual commitment to not calling each other on the painful things each of them is personally responsible for. It's them against the world. It doesn't matter what each of them did; they forgive each other, and that's all that matters.

[tanyev]

19. The Daily Show did a brilliant juxtaposition of this quote with footage

of George and Laura yukking it up with the West African Dance Company.

[The Count]

20. It's always "I" with these people. RW-er on maher errected a straw man for this

"if she said the opposite, I didn't suffer" - they'd attack her for that - she can't win". here's a thought: try not making war suffering about you, Pickles (&fans) - because the only way you are connected with this is: you caused it!

[Skittles]

22. a stupid, dimwitted nothing

she married GWB for chrissakes - that in itself speaks volumes

[Laurab]

23. Drugged out of any mind she might have had

I think it's that, and that alone. I've never once seen a photo of her where her eyes weren't glazed over - she probably lost touch with reality shortly after entering the WH, and when reality started seeping through the bubble she's in with *, the drugs took it away. She's like a pod person, whoever she once was is long gone.

[cassiepriam]

24. All of the above, plus drugged.

[ElspethR]

32. and here's an interesting thing...

She BARELY blinked at all - I thought she wore contact lenses (see interview about the night of 9/11 when she mentioned running about w/out her lenses in)? With those bright lights, she'd be blinking her eyes out. Granted, maybe she had lasik or whatnot, or maybe she was literally flying blind (like the way she drives) so she wouldn't have to focus on the interviewer and could facilitate the drugs by not having a crisp view of Curry and react.
And what gives w/the "uh, and I, uh..." If it is worry about retribution by the *, she shouldn't fear the shrub, she could rat him out in a heartbeat before he could call JimmyJeff to come over and snuff her out (we all know he couldn't do it himself - between the privelege and the drugs/alcohol, he can't function w/out his buttwiping staff or parents to come do it for him).
ITMFA!!!
Elspeth

[cassiepriam]

33. Yes I have noticed something odd about her eyes in a number of pictures.

She may be on some heavy duty meds?

Was your sense of her verbal stumbling that she was anxious and fearful?
Or that she was having trouble finding words?

I agree she could squash her hubby like a bug if she wanted.
But the tabloids have reported that he is very verbally abusive to
her in public, even in front of the press corp. She may fear his
public humiliation of her?

[MasonJar]

25. Laura, dear. you are no Jackie Kennedy! Laura is just plain dull.

Her clothing is dull; her ideas are dull; the list could go on and on, but why bother with such a boring topic?

[Starlight]

28. Her comment can be easily explained by Kohlberg's stages of moral development.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development

"The pre-conventional level of moral reasoning is especially common in children, although adults can also exhibit this level of reasoning. Reasoners in the pre-conventional level judge the morality of an action by its direct consequences. The pre-conventional level consists of the first and second stages of moral development, and are purely concerned with the self in an egocentric manner."

[GeorgeGist]

29. I would go with ...

soulless.

[Joe Bacon]

34. Laura, you killed in cold blood to get where you are

So shut up and enjoy the ride! :evilgrin: