Barbara Bush Blunders

[Idaho]

They were underpriverlidged anyway (chuckle) it's work out well for them

What a warm, compassionate, safe, rich and completely out of harm's way lady.

[Devastatin Dave]

Disgusting...

[Strike For The South]

wow just wow

[Ronin]

talk about a freudian slip.....



P.S.- i see that "compassionate conservative" thing runs in the family...

[JAG]

To think she stated what she really felt and states in private - in public. What a shocker.

[yesdachi]

I really like her. She seems like a really good-hearted person but she is old and at least a step outside of reality compared to the evacuated people. Plus she is old. I have the perfect pie-baking grandma who loves everyone but every once in a while she will say something that sounds totally wrong but she meant it in the nicest way. I forgive her because she is old (and bakes pies ).

I try to consider the source and judge accordingly. If it was the head of FEMA or the president it would be a different story but it is the countries grandma and although that doesn’t excuse the remark I consider the source and dismiss the inappropriateness of it.

Is she probably right? Maybe.

Should she have said it? Nope.

[Adrian II]

I think she just expressed her hope that things might indeed turn out for the best for these people. Clouds with silver linings, that sort of stuff. If her remarks are blown up this way, it just shows what low levels the bickering and recriminations have touched over the past week.

[doc_bean]

I don't think she meant it as evil as it sounds.

[Goofball]

"Let them eat cake."

[Petrus]

This new makes me think to a French queen, Marie-Antoinette in 1789 that is supposed to have asked, about the crowd that was asking for bread under the windows of her palace “They don’t have bread? Then why don’t they eat cake?”. A few days latter the revolution started and a few years latter she was condemned to death – for completely different reasons- and beheaded.

In those two cases, it seems it can be shortened as ‘Do those people really exist and why do they live like this?’

I find this even worst than if she had expressed contempt.

[t1master]

more race baiting by the media...

it's not news worthy, who cares what an eighty year old plus former first lady thinks, she don't make policy.

[Petrus]

more race baiting by the media...

it's not news worthy, who cares what an eighty year old plus former first lady thinks, she don't make policy.

I agree.

But it still shocks in the heat of the circumstances.

[yesdachi]

more race baiting by the media...

it's not news worthy, who cares what an eighty year old plus former first lady thinks, she don't make policy.

I agree.

And she’s nowhere near a “French Queen” what a ridiculous comparison. Marie-Antoinette was a witch and got what she deserved. Barbra Bush is a sweet old lady who doesn’t use a speechwriter when talking in front of the media. She’s old and has about as much political power as my grandma.

Leave her be media. If you want to pick on someone find me the Governor of Louisiana.

[Aenlic]

Leave her be media. If you want to pick on someone find me the Governor of Louisiana.

If she wants the media to leave her be, then why was she on a much-publicized tour of the Astrodome with her hubby? A media event. A photo-op. Sorry, she doesn't get to parade around in public with an entourage of media and secret service and then get a pass on why she's there in the first place.

[Del Arroyo]

I have to admit that I don't get it. What's the big deal?? What did she say wrong??

Can anyone elaborate, or are people just in inarticulate-tittle-mode?

DA

[Proletariat]

This is not 'let them eat cake.' In fact, 'Let them eat cake' isn't really half as flippant as people made it out, but whatever.

She's basically in typical Texan fashion explaining the level of hospitality and that if they choose to continue their lives in Houston, that might even be a nice change from the past.

Stupid thing to say, but reading this thread one would think she told all black people from NO to go screw themselves.

[Goofball]

Stupid thing to say,

That's the key right there.

[Proletariat]

No, the key is the ridiculous moral outrage in this thread.

[Aenlic]

If she had said something like "They were in horrible conditions in flood and hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, so coming to the Astrodome is working out much better for them" then I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. The Astrodome is working out much better for them than the Superdome and trying to survive in the disaster area.

But that isn't what she said. With typical Bush family obliviousness, she said "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them." This implies that living in cramped conditions in the Astrodome with just the clothes on their backs is working out better for them than being poor underprivileged people living in their own homes in New Orleans in their own town with their families etc. Homes and lives are now utterly destroyed along with all of their possessions. Uh huh. Typical Bush, completely disconnect from reality.

So in that sense, yeah, it does ring a little like Marie Antoinette's oblivious suggestion that cake is available and the starving poor can eat it - as if that was the only problem.

[yesdachi]

If she wants the media to leave her be, then why was she on a much-publicized tour of the Astrodome with her hubby? A media event. A photo-op. Sorry, she doesn't get to parade around in public with an entourage of media and secret service and then get a pass on why she's there in the first place.

Good point . If you ask to have your picture taken you better make sure you don’t have a big piece of spinach in your teeth, but weren’t her hubby and the Clintons there? They are all more important then she is, in the political game, and none of them are quoted, good or bad. But they (media) pick out something the least important of them say and try and make a big deal of it.

The reason she on the much-publicized tour is to help raise awareness and money for the people she is criticized for talking about (probably also to help Bush Sr. get around ).

[yesdachi]

she told all black people from NO to go screw themselves.

What, this is an outrage. I totally change my opinion!

And @ Aenlic in your made up quote you obviously took time to think about what to say. She said what she said off the cuff and it came out wrong. I don’t think it is “typical Bush” She is old and was on the spot plenty of reason to make a slipped up comment, could have easily happened to anyone. She gets a pass from me. But if she did say all black people from NO to go screw themselves. I would take back the pass.

[Aenlic]

Maybe it'll help to hear her in her own words, rather than a written quote. Then again, maybe it won't. After all, this is the woman who played golf with her hubby the day after her daughter, who died of leukemia, was buried.

http://www.publicradio.org/tools/med...barabush_sept5

[KafirChobee]

The statement as presented is outlandish - regardless of the stature of the public person saying it. However, interpretation of its actual meaning was leaped upon as being entirely negative, versus having some import of being in a possitive nature - that being that since these poor souls have nothing atleast they are now in a position to restart their lives (possibly in a more entitled or conciderate light). Though it is abhorant that one could seem so callous as to suggest these people are better off after Katrina than before, they certainly are in a better position to eventually better their former place in society than they were previously (in that, N.O. was one of the poorer neighborhoods of America - 35% unemployment, etc.).

I do not agree with what the former First Lady said, but I do believe it was taken out of context and splayed to reveal a much darker meaning than it actually had.

Gah! I'm defending a Bush! Gah!

[Devastatin Dave]

I just don't see how anyone could possibly be better off losing EVERYTHING including family members and pets (irreplacables) could possibly be better off. The ONLY way is if the politicians in that area get serious about helping the poor get skills for jobs and business and industry do the right thing and provide jobs to those willing to work. Sure she's old, but if she believes that these folks down there got a good deal out of whats happened to them, then she's an idiot. I love her, she was a great First Lady, but damn...

[Redleg]

Gah! I'm defending a Bush! Gah!

That's because you dont want to see the partisanship in her statement like some are.

I would have to agree with you - what she said was stupid - but its not what some are making it out to be.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

I just don't see how anyone could possibly be better off losing EVERYTHING including family members and pets (irreplacables) could possibly be better off.

Thats because your not dirt poor like many of these people. The really sad thing is she is correct about many of these people. Certainly those who lost loved ones will not be better off for it. But many will now have better housing and more money than they did before the hurricane. Im sure many will not return to NO but stay in Texas as she said. The place is now a huge cesspool and was always a shitty place to live. Its a microcasim of what the US would look like if the liberals ran the country as they did NO for 60 years. You would think after 60 yeares of liberal governmant the place would be a utopia. Instead it was disaster even before the hurricane hit.

[PanzerJaeger]

The level at which some people seek to demonize the Bush family is almost as pathetic as it is idiotic. Wow, you guys are really tough, picking on an old lady.

Despite the spin some are trying to put on this - the Marie-Antoinette comparisons were especially dumb - its obvious there was no ill feeling in her words.

She had just visited people who had come from the horrors of NO to the relative safety and comfort of the superdome. Of course they're better off.

And would anyone argue that the people who were left in NO were underpriveledged? Considering they had very little to begin with and nothing now, the great Texas outpouring of support is working out damned well for them.

If you're going to Bush bash, choose a target that has at least served any time in office, morons.

[Devastatin Dave]

If you're going to Bush bash, choose a target that has at least served any time in office, morons.

I'm not Bush bashing, I'm just having a hard time seeing how losing everything you have, includings things that CAN'T be replaced, would make you better off. I guess I'm a moron then.

[Brenus]

“the Marie-Antoinette comparisons were especially dumb”: Not really because Marie Antoinette didn’t meant harm neither. She was really worried about the poor French starving… It is worst, because that is the proof that these people are completely cut from reality…
And to just imagine than refuges are better of is an insult to intelligence…
And to be old isn’t an excuse to be stupid, criminal or what ever else. I am tired of his kind of sentences. If Milosevic would be 90, his crimes should be forgotten? Stalin is not guilty because he died from old age?
She was the first lady, she still has a place at the front page of the news, and she should have shut-up. Or, at least she should express herself in better way. And I think she did.

[yesdachi]

I thought a comparison to Mari-Antoinett was bad now Milosevic and Stalin? Wow. I say stupid stuff all the time maybe I’m as bad as Hitler or Mao.

Thanks for the link Aenlic but I’ve been hearing it all morning on the radio.