When In Doubt, Mock Yourself

This has been GW's conventional wisdom since he was governor of Texas. Nothing like a little self-effacing humor to defuse a tense moment right? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Next time your significant other or family member is pissed at you and you know you deserve his/her ire, try out GW's strategy. Throw in a little self-effacing quip about how wrong you were. I say the odds are 50/50 this strategy will get you out of the dog house. It's a risky little game. Because it may reflect a lack of contrition and you'll be in bigger trouble.

It's one thing to try to use this strategy because you forgot to pay the water bill again, but it's another thing to do it when over 500 troops have died in a war you pushed on the country.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a decent summary from the The Guardian:

A slide showed Mr Bush in the Oval office, leaning to look under a piece of furniture. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere," he told the audience, drawing applause.

Another slide showed him peering into another part of the office, "Nope, no weapons over there," he said, laughing. "Maybe under here," he said, as a third slide was shown.

Funny stuff.

He should have had a slide of him peering in a solider's casket and saying, "Nope not in here either," laughing the whole time of course.

My initial reaction is this is very offensive, but maybe I've lost my objectivity in my distaste for Bush. A case can be made that this line of comedy was appropriate, given the context of the talk. It was intended to be a light-hearted roast for journalists. But I'd be interested to hear from people outside the Anybody But Bush crowd to see if they found it offensive.

Bush really doesn't seem to appreciate the gravity of people dying. Keep in mind this is a guy who mocked the pleas for clemency of death-row inmate Karla Faye Tucker. Remember this gem?

Text from www.consortiumnews.com.

Early in Campaign 2000, Bush was traveling around with conservative writer Tucker Carlson, who was preparing a profile. Carlson later recounted Bush’s ridicule of convicted murderer Karla Faye Tucker as she pleaded for her life.

Asked about her clemency appeal, Bush mimicked what he claimed was the condemned woman’s message to him: “With pursed lips in mock desperation, [Bush said,] ‘Please don’t kill me.’” Carlson wrote in Talk magazine.

Does anyone else sense this man has a disconnect between real life and real death? Obviously I don't know the man, but you have to be worried about a head of state who mocks people he himself has sentenced to die and laughs off a war he sold on a premise he can't prove.

Soldiers and Iraqi citizens are dying. Make fun of yourself when you forget your anniversary. Show contrition when you are sending Americans away from their families to kill and die.