My rage at the current state of affairs in this country--the bigotry of the religious right and their accomplices in both state and federal legislatures; $21 billion that goes missing and a
president who likes it that way; our soldiers who continue to come home either in 1) boxes, b) serious mental or physical disrepair;
new heights of corruption among Republican legislators while much of the media still tries to portray it as a bi-partisan problem--seems to achieve new heights every day.
But on this day I can't vent any further rage. I just need to calmly go about life, do some work, watch some of the World Cup, and be somewhat placated that, while we have a charlatan and fraud for a president, he's no Dog Whisperer.
In an otherwise disappointing article in the May 22 The New Yorker from the usually brilliant Malcolm Gladwell, I learned something that didn't really surprise me about our current president. According to "movement analyst" Karen Bradley, who directs the graduate dance program at the University of Maryland, GWB, unlike Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton, has poor physical "phrasing."
The article discusses the unique talents of Cesar Millan to tame what are otherwise out-of-control canines and who is the star of a show on the National Geographic Channel called the "Dog Whisperer." Among other talents, Mr. Millan apparently has exquisite "phrasing," just one of the reasons why he can tame dogs that, up until to the point he entered into their lives, seemed untamable.
At one point, the article comes around to Mr. GWB. And here is what it says:
During this year's State of the Union address, Bush spent the entire speech swaying metronomically, straight down through his lower torso, a movement underscored, unfortunately, by the presence of a large vertical banner behind him.
<snip>
[Bradley] mimed, perfectly, the Bush gaze--the squinty, fixated look he reserves for moments of great solemnity--and gently swayed back and forth. "It's a little primitive, a little regressed." The combination of the look, the sway, and the gaze was, to her mind, distinctly adolescent.
<snip>
[Bush] moves like a boy, which is fine, except that... he can't stop moving like a boy when the occasion demands a more grown-up response.
So there you have it. He may be a two-term president of the most powerful country in the world, and he may be driving our little experiment in Democracy into the crapper (along with the rest of the world), but George W. Bush moves and talks like a child.
He's no Dog Whisperer.