With the usual gang of shameless Republican hypocrites being joined by the usual gang of spineless Democratic wimps in scolding Rep. Pete Stark for suggesting that George W. Bush's response to the deaths of U.S. troops is "amusement," might I suggest that maybe Stark doesn't really owe anyone an apology?
1) What animal did a pre-teen George W. Bush like to blow up with firecrackers?
a) Rabbit.
b) Frog.
c) Hamster.
2) What was the subject of then-Yale party boy George W. Bush's first nationally quoted statement?
a) A complaint about the smell of hippies.
b) An apology for his arrest for stealing a Christmas wreath from a New Haven hotel.
c) A defense of his frat's practice of branding pledges with hot wire hangers in which he pooh-poohed the resulting "insignificant" wound as "only a cigarette burn" that leaves "no scarring mark, physically or mentally."
3) What made George W. Bush chuckle during a debate with Al Gore?
a) He suddenly remembered something funny from an Austin Powers movie.
b) Gore couldn't stop saying "lockbox."
c) The moderator brought up an incident in which the lawyer for a Texas death row inmate slept through much of his client's trial.
4) What put a big smile on George W. Bush's face during a debate with Al Gore?
a) Saying of the three Texans who killed a black man by dragging him behind their truck, "Guess what's going to happen to them! They're going to be put to death!"
b) Saying, "I'm a uniter, not a divider."
c) Memories of cursing out a reporter who'd written something innocuous that he'd taken great offense at in front of the man's wife and four-year-old son, drunkenly snarling, "You no-good fucking son-of-a-bitch, I will never fucking forget what you wrote!"
5) After observing him pump his left fist and say, "I feel good!" mere seconds before going on the air to announce that the U.S. was at war with Iraq, who marveled at George W. Bush's "almost giddy readiness to kill"?
a) Chris Matthews.
b) Jack Cafferty.
c) Keith Olbermann.
6) What observation did author Mark Crispin Miller make about George W. Bush?
a) That his nicknames for people weren't really cute at all, but rather his bully-boy way of saying, "I'm not gonna call you by your name, asshole, I'm gonna call you what I wanna call you."
b) That he seemed destined to leave office generally understood to have been "the nation's worst president ever, elected or not."
c) That he's only given to malaprops like "I know how hard it is to put food on your family" when he's trying to sound caring or compassionate, but when he's talking about punishing someone or the infliction of pain, his statements are clear and concise, since spoken from the heart.
7) What was the reaction of the audience at a 2004 dinner of White House radio and TV reporters when George W. Bush accompanied a slide show of pictures of him looking under furniture and peeking behind drapes with the narration, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere ... Nope, no weapons over there. Maybe under here ..."?
a) Stunned silence, with several reporters -- though no one from Fox -- getting up and walking out to protest the aberrant unfeelingness of George W. Bush's joking about a situation he had needlessly gotten the country into in which thousands upon thousands of Americans were being killed or maimed, and that's not even mentioning the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis.
b) Howls of sycophantic laughter, or at least one hopes it was sycophantic, as genuine laughter would be even more horrific.
8) True or false? In a 1999 interview with Talk magazine reporter (and future cable clown) Tucker Carlson, George W. Bush recounted a Larry King interview with condemned and famously born-again Texas killer Karla Faye Tucker, in which "he asked her real difficult questions, like, 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'" and when Carlson asked what her response was, Bush pursed his lips in mock desperation and whimpered, "Please don't kill me" -- a grotesque enough response if it had actually happened, but breathtakingly ugly considering that transcripts prove she said no such thing.
a) False, no one could be that gratuitously cruel.
b) True, and in that light, has anything happened since this ignorant sadistic bully and his gang of droogs hijacked the presidency that can rightly be considered surprising?
ANSWERS: 1) b, 2) c, 3) c, 4) a, 5) a, 6) c, 7) b, 8) b
Paul Slansky's quizzes will be a regular feature on 23/6, the new satiric news site coming soon to a computer screen near you.