The U.S. presidential campaign is grinding along at a snail's pace and I'm sick of it. Ok, what I'm really sick of is hearing or seeing G.W. Bush. My body cringes every time he says something stupid (which seems to be just about every time he says anything that isn't completely scripted), and I almost go apoplectic every time he smirks. But there seems to be no way to escape. His image and voice are everywhere.
Yesterday, for example, even though I very carefully avoided all forms of media, I was assaulted by G.W.'s voice blaring out of the speakers at the gas station. As I was minding my own business, filling my gas tank with $2.00 a gallon gas, there was G.W. playing "pin the lie on Kerry." As Bush spoke, it hit me that Bush and the people promoting him sound an awful lot like five-year-olds. Every time Kerry points out that the Bush White House lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush responds with something like "No, I didn't. And besides, you lied about your medal. And even if you didn't lie about that, you lied about something. And besides, your mother smells like a rotten egg." And as I thought about this, it occurred to me that perhaps Bush's seeming stupidity isn't simply due to the fact that he almost totally blew off college (except partying, which he seems to have mastered quite well**). Perhaps the real problem is that he never went to kindergarten. (Or if he did go, he missed the point.)
According to Robert Fulghum, the most important lessons we learn in life are what we learn in kindergarten or Sunday school: "Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things" (Fulghum, p. 6). Based on Bush's track record, he doesn't seem to have learned these basic lessons.
If the world were run by a seasoned, all-powerful kindergarten teacher (who is statistically more likely to be female than male) rather than the almost impotent United Nations, G.W. would be a more well-behaved little boy. In this alternative universe (in which G.W. would probably still be sitting in the corner for cheating rather than sitting in the Oval office), when G.W. proposed the tax cuts which resulted in massive cuts to social services, our world leader kindergarten teacher would have censured him. She would have probably said something like, "Dubbya, you know that in this world we don't just take things from other people. We play fair and we share everything. Stop hogging all the toys and Cheetos for you and your friends. You give everything that you've taken back this instant and tell the rest of the class that you're sorry." She would have said the same thing about the administration's liberal allocation of contracts in Iraq to Halliburton. (Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris would probably still be standing in a corner for disenfranchising so many Floridian voters, especially black ones, during the 2000 election for not playing fair as well.)
Go To Page: 1 2
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Regina Sewell's Gender & Society topic, please visit the Discussions page.