American President Pleads Guilty to Hopeless Idealism
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT
LONDON
President Bush was in one of his oddly chipper moods when he arrived for dinner with Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street on Sunday night.
Maybe he was excited by the prospect of sharing some Gloucestershire beef, Yorkshire pudding and fruit trifle with a world leader more unpopular than he is.
Maybe he was happy to be having dinner with Rupert Murdoch and a covey of British historians who might agree with his contention to London’s Observer that “there’s no such thing as objective short-term history.” Just in case, though, the group dwelled on the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and didn’t talk about the 21st. And presumably, over the 1934 brandy that W. eschewed, the historian Simon Schama did not repeat his 2006 assessment that the president was an “absolute [expletive] catastrophe” or his analysis that long before Mr. Bush’s militant missionary work in the Middle East, Europe had regarded the moral rhetoric of America as a cover for self-interest.
Maybe W. was buoyant because his motorcade evaded the protestors holding up signs that said “War Criminal,” and he was too far away to hear the withering scorn of a BBC correspondent stationed on Downing Street, warning that the British public wouldn’t stand for it if the prime minister greeted the toxic president too warmly. Britain is still smarting about being cast as poodle to W.’s pit bull, and the correspondent sneeringly recalled “the Colgate moment” when Tony Blair and George Bush bonded over their use of the same toothpaste.
(Continued here.)
NYT
LONDON
President Bush was in one of his oddly chipper moods when he arrived for dinner with Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street on Sunday night.
Maybe he was excited by the prospect of sharing some Gloucestershire beef, Yorkshire pudding and fruit trifle with a world leader more unpopular than he is.
Maybe he was happy to be having dinner with Rupert Murdoch and a covey of British historians who might agree with his contention to London’s Observer that “there’s no such thing as objective short-term history.” Just in case, though, the group dwelled on the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and didn’t talk about the 21st. And presumably, over the 1934 brandy that W. eschewed, the historian Simon Schama did not repeat his 2006 assessment that the president was an “absolute [expletive] catastrophe” or his analysis that long before Mr. Bush’s militant missionary work in the Middle East, Europe had regarded the moral rhetoric of America as a cover for self-interest.
Maybe W. was buoyant because his motorcade evaded the protestors holding up signs that said “War Criminal,” and he was too far away to hear the withering scorn of a BBC correspondent stationed on Downing Street, warning that the British public wouldn’t stand for it if the prime minister greeted the toxic president too warmly. Britain is still smarting about being cast as poodle to W.’s pit bull, and the correspondent sneeringly recalled “the Colgate moment” when Tony Blair and George Bush bonded over their use of the same toothpaste.
(Continued here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home