Celebrity Encounters of the Off-Putting Kind

He should have considered this before he had children!


It was a gorgeous May weekend, so Phoenix and I hightailed it to southern Maine to celebrate our anniversary. We booked a Saturday night table at Grissini, a fine Italian restaurant in Kennebunkport. In addition to scrumptious food we enjoyed watching a parade of flamboyantly dressed young people: local kids armed with their parents’ credit cards having a formal dinner before heading off to the prom. All it took was one bad encounter to take the edge off the festivities. Just as we were finishing dessert Phoenix exclaimed, “Oh my God!” Up the ramp came a Secret Service agent steadying a tottering old man, George H. Bush. White-haired Barbara was close behind, as was another agent and a younger couple we presumed to be Bushes of some ilk or other.

Americans generally like vicarious celebrity encounters, but this one nearly put us off our feed. Did we feel sorry for the obviously frail former president? Nope. He’s just an old fool now instead of the younger fool he used to be. He was always a fool, from his early days in which he used his oil companies as CIA fronts, to his misdirection as head of that agency, to his involvement with Enron, to his hold-your-tongue about “voodoo economics” and be Ronnie Reagan’s lapdog, to his dishonoring of the presidency. For Clarence Thomas alone he’s due a national flogging. But there are two things for which I can never forgive him: poor parenting and Iraq.

George and Babs sired a nest of vipers. We hear so much about the 2008 bank bailout. How quickly we forget that it’s peanuts compared to the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s occasioned by Reagan-Bush deregulation. Front and center was son Neil Bush, whose Silverado fiasco was among the most expensive missteps in what ultimately cost tax payers a whopping $14 trillion. Good old Jeb got a piece of that action too—he was heavily invested in a Florida S & L that ran aground—but instead of the jail time he deserved he got to be governor of Florida and help steal the 2000 election for his numskull brother George W.

Dubya will be forever associated with the war in Iraq but, lest we forget, it was his old man who started the damn thing. For reasons that have more to do with supporting oil sheiks friendly to the Bush family than with national security, we invaded Iraq in 1990-91. For some odd reason, we called this a “victory” because it only cost the deaths of 294 U.S. soldiers, 87 coalition troops, and around 30,000 Iraqis. Plenty of reason for Dubya to order up round two in 2003. The tab on this one as of May 19 is 4397 U.S. dead, 318 coalition fatalities, and between 100,000 to 600,000 Iraqi dead (depending on whose propaganda you want to believe). Boy have we brought “democracy” to Iraq! Too bad 2.1 million refugees can’t enjoy it and that those who stayed are more fixated on 50% inflation and 28% child mortality rates.

When I see George H. Bush, I don’t see one old man about to shuffle off this mortal coil; I see 4691 American ghosts, over 39,000 wounded vets, and millions of distressed Iraqis. And I think about our $1.4 trillion deficit and how much easier it would be to retire if we hadn’t spent $900 billion and counting on Iraq. I also think of the bad seed that continues¬—all of Jeb’s and Dubya’s kids have had encounters with the law. What I mainly think is, “Will someone please save America and sterilize this family?”

The old fool sat three tables away from us. I hurried my coffee and got out of there. Apparently we weren’t alone in our distaste; two other couples beat us out the door.