April 01, 2008

Quick Quiz: Booed Bush

With George W. Bush having been lustily booed at the baseball season opener, Paul Slansky looks back at some other moments when booing would have been appropriate.

1) Which of these events occurred at the 2006 G8 summit?

Trying to avoid answering reporters' questions, George W. Bush strode to a set of double doors and yanked goofily on them to no avail, as they were locked.

George W. Bush passed a note to Condoleeza Rice that read, to quote it exactly, "I think I MAY NEED A BATHroom break. Is this possible?"

Thinking it was a private moment, George W. Bush was caught on camera telling Tony Blair, "See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over." Oh, and he was leaning back and chewing a mouthful of freshly buttered bread when he said it.

2) Who is Angela Merkel?

One of the young children looking on in horror when George W. Bush, who was carrying his dog, Barney, accidentally dropped him.

The reporter to whom George W. Bush declared, "I'm the Decider."

The German chancellor who George W. Bush gave an uninvited neck massage to during the 2006 G8 summit, having decided that he was entitled to come up behind an unsuspecting world leader and intimately place his hands on her body just 'cause the whim struck him.

3) Who is Maria Pope?

The teacher in the classroom where George W. Bush sat and stared at an open copy of My Pet Goat for seven minutes after being told that the second plane had hit the second tower.

The White House staffer who recorded George W. Bush's hilarious search for WMDs under furniture at the White House.

The unsuspecting executive producer of Late Night with David Letterman, on whose clothing guest George W. Bush cleaned his glasses during a commercial break in the October 19, 2000 broadcast. Think about it. The man leaned forward and brazenly grabbed the back of her jacket as she leaned over to talk to Letterman and wiped his glasses on it. He wiped his personal dirt on a stranger's clothing without a nanosecond of doubt about his right to do so. Can anything that's happened in the seven-plus years since that grotesque moment of indecent self-exposure be considered surprising?