You're Bush. Your poll numbers are in the garbage. You've just nominated a guy to head the CIA that basically all of Congress has said is wrong. You're upstaged - and basically torn a new one - by Stephen Colbert at the correspondent's dinner. Even al-Queida terrorist tapes aren't bringing up the poll numbers. Everything you touch is simply turning into lead.
So you'd think that a puff piece talking about soccer's World Cup, would be the type of thing that folksy Bush would hit out of the park, right?
Right?
Think again.
The title seems innocent enough. "Bush Says He's Learning Fast About the World Cup".
Link to Yahoo! Article
I am no politician, but there are some questions even I could answer correctly. Let's suppose you're asked about the World Cup. Now I'm a fan, but if I were asked about the Ryder Cup, I'd ask a few questions to my sources about it, say some nice things about the state of golf in America, and of course, be completely behind the American team and have full faith in them to do their best, if not win the thing.
Nothing is more important in connecting with sports fans in at least prentending, at some level, to be familiar with their sport.
Let's see what Bush says:
"As a boy I never even saw a soccer ball," Bush said in an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "Where I'm from soccer wasn't played. The sport just didn't exist. So there is a generation of Americans who really aren't soccer fans."
So much for inspiring. Furthermore, on display of Bush's thinking process in action, in all its naked glory. First, wear your ignorance on your sleeve to folks who obviously care about soccer (i.e., the person asking the question).
"Where I came from, soccer wasn't played."
Repeat twice, just to make sure the message about my complete insular idiocy is hammered home. (I think this is called "appealing to the base").
"As a boy I never even saw a soccer ball. The sport just didn't exist."
Then, come to an emprically idiotic conclusion by projecting your existence on an entire generation.
"So there is a generation of Americans who really aren't soccer fans."
Ah yes, the hidden Republican message for the ages. "I had no exposure to this as a kid. Therefore, it really must not exist." Same as being uninsured, being poor, being discriminated against. "Didn't happen to me, so it doesn't exist." (Howard Dean, I'm giviing you this one free of charge.)
Note the complete lack of acknowlegement that there ARE Americans from his generation that care about and enjoy soccer. This should come as no surprise - not listening to opposing viewpoints should sound familiar to anyone who reemebers, oh, let's say the Iraq war?
Also worthy of note the insistence of since HE never experienced soccer that EVERYONE must not care about soccer either. More clues about his though process involving WMD. Just because HE believed there were WMD, WE ALL did too.
The freight train continues to careen towards a wreck.
"A lot of us grew up without any connection to soccer -- me, for example," Bush said. "But there is a new generation that has grown up with soccer. They obviously have a great interest in the World Cup.
"And some of us older fellas are starting to understand how important the World Cup is for the whole world."
More Bush logic in action.
First, repeat the message that "I'm an insular idiot that has rarely left the confines of my house".
"A lot of us grew up without any connection to soccer -- me, for example."
Then, spell out some "observation" that is so stunningly simpleminded that you're left wondering is he could passibly have meant what he said since it's so completely obvious.
"But there is a new generation that has grown up with soccer. They obviously have a great interest in the World Cup."
First of all, Bush is obviously not including HIMSELF in this observation. It's "they", that "new generation". But there's a larger point. You're simply left wondering if Bush is so much of a freaking simpleton that he really doesn't know what the World Cup is.
As dumb as Bush is, I have little doubt that he has at least encountered a soccer ball somewhere in his years on the planet. I would imagine that somewhere in his conversations with Lula, Brazil's president, that maybe their World-Cup-winning team came up. Could it be that he really doesn't know?
So I'm left wondering if he a) is ignorant of the most popular sport in the world, or b) he's lying about his ignorance to impress the 32% (and falling) folks that approve of his presidency. Both possibilities are too frightening to contemplate.
Then he adds:
"And some of us older fellas are starting to understand how important the World Cup is for the whole world."
I know that Bush has made a career of projecting ignorance around the world with stunning speed and intensity, but this one really ought to be framed in a special place. Starting to understand? Is that just like how you're STARTING TO UNDERSTAND that INVADING IRAQ WAS THE STUPIDEST FUCKING IDEA ever?
Finally, Bush had to at least have been briefed that the USA has a World Cup team this year, right? You'd think that, in a moment of patriotic fervor, he'd be able to hit that one out of the park? Just something out of a Capra movie, that he knows at least one player on the team, and that he thinks that they're going to win, right? Just a good ol' "We're America, and we're #1?"
"Of course the U.S. is my team," he said. "I've been told that we have a good team. But who knows whether it's good enough to win."
"WHO KNOWS WHETHER IT'S GOOD ENOUGH TO WIN???" You'd think that Bush wouldn't have to rely on his intelligence services to figure out to say "America has a great team, and I think they'll do a great job, and I'll be rooting for them."
Think about this a minute. If Lula of Brazil said that about his team, his head would be on a pole. If Blair said that, he'd have to resign the next day.
Could this be a sign that the war in Iraq has gotten to Bush? Moping around, self-defeatist? America is not #1 anymore? THIS IS OUR COMMANDER IN CHIEF? HE CAN'T EVEN LEAD OUR FUCKING SOCCER TEAM TO VICTORY? AND HE IS OUR FUCKING PRESIDENT, LEADING OUR BEST YOUNG PEOPLE TO BATTLE?
Why is it always the piece always starts out so funny, and then ends up so sad?