OK, I know the title of this diary sounds like the start to a great joke, but instead it relates to our ersatz President's alleged reading habits. I think the story earlier this month that Bush had been reading
The Stranger by Albert Camus was a direct if subtle response to the recent Will Ferrell movie
Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which I went to see this week.
Follow me over the flip to see if you agree. Oh yeah...and I challenge you to come up with the rest of the joke that starts "Ricky Bobby, George Bush, and Albert Camus walk into a bar..."
Two things about me you gotta understand. First, I grew up in Alabama and went to six or seven races at Talladega during the late 70s and 80s. This was the golden era of NASCAR and, if you don't know, the Talladega Speedway is one of the monsters. Those were the days when drivers would fight on the side of the track after wrecks (Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison, I believe), when the corporations were not in complete control of the drivers, and before restrictor plates at Talladega and Daytona. Those are the two monster tracks, about two and a half miles long with turns banked at about 30°. Back in the day, the cars would run about 210 mph, faster than that down the front straight (about a mile long), slightly slower in the turns, but not so much due to the steep bank. The sight and sound of the cars coming out of turn 4 headed for the green at the start/finish line at Talladega is truly amazing. Twenty-one rows of two cars each in file, maybe three or four feet apart side to side and closer together back to front, coming around the bank and gaining speed. It moves as a single object and is called The Freight Train. They are up to full speed as they come back around the track to complete the first of 177 laps and stay together for the first several laps. When the Train comes out of turn 4 at the end of the first lap, the air shakes and the ground rumbles. Truly, truly one of the remarkable sights in the world of sports.
The second thing you gotta know about me is that I love Will Ferrell movies. As you can probably tell from my affection for NASCAR racing even today, I have a low brow streak a mile wide. I am not sure that Talladega Nights is as funny as Anchor Man, but it is still damn funny in many places. I think Ferrell's politics are pretty clear. I use "strategery" without thinking about it and love the opening of his first fake Bush campaign ad in 2004: "Oh, hello my fellow Americans. You caught me mending my fences. I hope you are enjoying the rights and freedoms we as Americans enjoy". Totally brilliant. Without giving much away, my favorite scene in the new movie involves Ricky Bobby saying grace before he and his wife and two kids and father-in-law and best friend and teammate Cal start a dinner of all corporate food (KFC, various sodas, etc...I think the rampant product placement throughout the movie is ironic on several levels). Ricky likes to pray to the baby Jesus ("Dear eight pound, six ounce baby Jesus"), which irritates his wife and father-in-law. The baby Jesus is his favorite Jesus. Others have their own favorite Jesus, including Christmas Jesus, which is definitely distinct from the baby Jesus. This is a deeply subversive scene.
The "dramatic tension" in the movie arrives in the form of Jean Girard, a gay French Formula 1 driver who has switched to NASCAR to beat Ricky Bobby. Girard drives a car sponsored by Perrier. He "sips" macchiatos while driving, pour the coffee drink from a small cup inside the opening of his helmet at about the level of the bridge of his nose and curses Ricky Bobby when a small collision spills his drink. And most importantly for my thesis, he reads The Stranger while driving!
Talladega Nights was released on Friday, 4 August. The star has solid anti-Bush credentials based on his portayal of Bush as an idiot (I know, a real stretch). The movies uses a favorite sport of a big part of Bush's base, white, Southern, working class males, as the foil for humor. Personally, I don't think it mocks the fan base of NASCAR specifically, but it certainly will attract many fans of NASCAR.
One week after the release of the film, Friday, 11 August, Tony Snow told reporters in Crawford, TX that Bush had just finished reading The Stranger by Albert Camus. Bush is widely considered to be an uninquisitive and anti-intellectual man. Many folks here and elsewhere in Left Blogistan snickered at the notion of Bush reading one of the seminal works of Existentialism, a book written by one of the most prominent 20th Century intellectuals. The notion of Bush reading Camus is completely out of character. What led him to read it, or, as I suspect, led BushCo to claim that he had read it? I think Jean Girard's taste in reading while racing Ricky Bobby may be the answer.
OK, this is certainly a stretch, but it certainly seems plausible. How many folks would even recognize the book Girard was reading given that that shot lasted maybe two or three second if that long and the book was in French (L'etranger)? What would Bush get out of it? But that is just how media conscious BushCo is I would say! Not only is Bush in on the humor of Talladega Nights, he has also been prompted to check out what Girard, the hay French driver ultimately defeated by the macho American Ricky Bobby, was reading. He is in on the joke and man enough to step up and read existentialism at its finest.
Claiming that Bush was reading The Stranger was a subtle if not bizarre attempt at manipulating his media image and coopting the humor and appeal of a popular actor who has ridiculed Bush on tv and on the internets.