Dear Laura Bush: Leave Us Laughing, Please

Dear Laura Bush,

You made it. It's over, finally. I can only imagine the relief you must feel as you stroll across the White House lawn and into the helicopter leaving the whole sorry eight years behind you.

I want you to know that I always rooted for you. You're funny. You really won me over when you joked openly about your husband's simple-mindedness at the White House Correspondents' Dinner a few years back. That performance did a great national service. It took the pressure off us having to keep pretending that George W. Bush was presidential material. If his wife had his number, we were free to laugh at the absurdity of our situation.

Now, I wish there was another opportunity for you to speak. It would help us flush out the toxins in our guts left by the war, economy and mean spiritedness of the last eight years.

Just between us girls, I think you married beneath you. It makes me feel bad to confess this, but I've felt a little sorry for you these past few years. You're smart. I've never met a librarian who wasn't. And you comport yourself like a person who knows and likes herself -- always an attractive quality in a person.

Calling for a new day is fine. The Obama Administration holds great promise and President Obama is right to move on. But I wonder how we'll shake it off as a people. How do we cleanse ourselves after all that we've witnessed: torture, corruption, profiteering from the war, rigging of elections, and the collapse of our economy? How do we expunge the residue of panic left in our blood streams from being trapped on a runaway bus with an incompetent driver? Do we just snap our fingers and move on?

You can help. Consider it one of your last acts. Maybe you have a joke or an anecdote about your husband that will lighten our load and help heal our wounds. Because for now, we're all just pretending like we feel no pain.

Patricia Martin

 

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Comments

[JonJon1212]

On the above, the paragraphs should have begun with "Really this is low.... ". They were not posted in order, sorry.

[vegas9999]

Looking at this new administration and what they have done in the past, and you make fun of Bush? One year from now you will all be in hiding.

[JonJon1212]

I would like to see innovation, I would like yourself as well as people who write similar articles in such a spirit as this to use your words without couching them in sarcasim or 'humor' or puffery because I think you would learn that you are not so far away from President Bush at all and the disdain you hold for him and the easy conviction of him, his body of work, without possibly knowing all of the 'facts' is astoundingly similar to what he is acused of doing to earn such disdain. The impact or scale of the harm may be far less but intent/intention is clear and so the cycle go on and on. I would be happy for a inovator who simpy stoped the ongoing cycle of blame which, as cycles do, eventually end up facing your own behind as well.

[JonJon1212]

Really this is low and somewhat distasteful not what I think we need . You ask about cleaning and look for a way how, the prescription is easily said difficult to do; you forgive. You do not forget nor do you not hold a person accountable for their actions ---forgiveness is not depenant on either. Frankly you are not there yet. You are angry, rightly so but that is the start not the end. You told a person that their partner is beneth them, a value/egotistical judgement that says far more about you than the person's partner. President Bush will be judged by each individual, should they care to do so, based upon what he did or did not do as president. Laura Bush will be in a position to judge the man as husband. It hard to imagine your sincerity which tinges all of your expressed thoughts with equal unbelivabilty even if each and every statement in your words eventually proves correct. "Just between us girls" when these staments will be read by so many others and "just pretending like we feel no pain' when you seem to be very in touch with your pain (and anger) do not help me to make another assesment. I think in selling your work its easier to follow a proven trend than trying to start another. Few people are innovators and no one need be to be thought of as successful.