Bush Sr. (with "amazing candor"!): I didn't know blacks were human until going through their mail!

[Bluebear]

OK I am not surprised and frankly relieved that he never told "bawdy stories" about Babs, but as for not "knowing" the black stewards were human before he censored their mail - - wow.

======

Young George, who would later be awarded the Navy’s Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions that day, didn’t feel much like a hero. He feared correctly that his crewmates were dead. In that life raft, he began asking himself the question that still haunts him in his Houston office at age 82: “Did I do all I could to save them?” In the raft he cried.

====

Against regulations, his gunner, Leo Nadeau, painted “Barbara” on the side of their plane. Men noticed he was different. He never told bawdy stories about his sweetheart. He didn’t try to pick up women on nights in town. And, quite out of tune with the bravado spirit of young men off at war, he didn’t smoke or drink or cuss.

====

For a while, Bush censored the mail of the ship’s black stewards. He suddenly stops talking and squints back tears.

“Golly,” he says, “I get all choked up thinking about it… ‘cold storage boys,’ they called them.” Then, with amazing candor, he says, “You know they were human beings, and I’m not sure I really knew that or appreciated it or was sensitive to it until I had to do that little experience.”

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070423005417&newsLang=en

[LiberalFighter]

1. Rewriting history -- whoever gets the last word

[The Backlash Cometh]

40. You called that one right.

[4bucksagallon]

2. George Sr. deserted his crewmen just as his son deserted us vietnam vets.

Seems to run in the family this desertion thing.

[Erika]

3. Is this for real?

He didn't think blacks were human? Tell me it's out of the Onion, please.

[Bluebear]

6. Oh, it's real. Why he is announcing this I have no idea. nt

[goclark]

7. Please say you are making this up!

Wait until he has to be the best man when his son marries sweet Condi.

That will be after GW dumps Pickles.

I wonder if "The Little Brown One" will be the token ring bearer.

Foot Keeps Meeting Mouth for this scum.

Like father,like Mother ~ like son.

[aquart]

4. Quite common for his class and era.

They didn't think servants or lower class people of any race were human.

[beam me up scottie]

5. Jesus Christ on a trailer hitch.

"amazing candor"?

It just gets better and better.

Are we supposed to admire him for admitting this???

[MedleyMisty]

8. Aren't most people like that?

I remember when Letters From Iwo Jima came out NPR interviewed two veterans who'd been there, and one said that after watching the movie he realized that "Japs" were people just like us who wrote home to their parents and girlfriends and all, but he still "wasn't going to go to no sushi store or nothing."

That's why exposure to people who aren't like you is so important when you're young. Exposure that people as privileged as Bush usually never get.

I have to admit that I wonder sometimes if that's why I don't see the South as being as racist as some other people do. I worked at Wal-Mart and at Arby's and saw plenty of interracial relationships. Maybe the South that other people know is the white bread gated community rich folks one.

[merh]

11. I'm in the South and we still have racism (as does every region

of this nation, of the world). I think what makes the South so different is the fact that we have been beaten upside the head for so long for the extreme racism of our not so long ago past that we try to go the extra step to overcome our past.

What Poppy is referring to is not racism as much as it is classism, the caste system. He and his wife and his son are not average citizens, they are part of the old money, the elite that have no idea what normal folks are like. They don't really know what it means to work to get somewhere or what it is to struggle to survive.

They are the "haves" and the rest of society are the "have nots".

[B3Nut]

42. Remember the grocery scanner incident?

In the 80's he visited a grocery store, and saw a scanner for the first time. He didn't have a *clue* what it was. He was *completely* out of touch with how the rest of the world lived, and IMHO there's no excuse for that. People like that have no business wielding the levers of power.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[Blue_Roses]

43. well said!

nt

[Missy M]

13. He was an adult and he didn't realize blacks were humans...

I find that to be mind boggling. There is something wrong with his mind.

[NJCher]

9. yeah, every now and then

He shows his true stripes. Remember that comment he made about the "little brown ones?" Gag. What a jerk. The whole family nauseastes me.

No doubt we'll soon be treated to another gem from Beautiful Mind Babs. These things seem to run in threes, and what with jr and his carpet babbling the other day... you're up, Babs!



Cher

[Botany]

10. And so all those black voters in Florida 2000 & Ohio 2004 who .....

.... got purged from the voter rolls were not human either?

[Oilwellian]

12. I wake up in the middle of some horror

George Bush still has nightmares occasionally about his plane being shot up, going down, and his crewmen dying. “Every once in a while,” he says with a reflective tone, “I wake up in the middle of some horror. It’s not a pleasant dream. It’s not.”

Yes George, we understand the horror quite well and it's not even a dream.

[Leopolds Ghost]

15. The horror... the horror.

I've seen horrors … horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that … but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face … and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us, and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember … I … I … I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized … like I was shot … like I was shot with a diamond … a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God … the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men … trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love … but they had the strength … the strength … to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral … and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling … without passion … without judgment … without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.

Col. Kurtz, "Apolcalypse Now" (Heart of Darkness)

[Blue_Tires]

32. best.film.ever!

brilliant

[appleannie1]

14. He and 'beautiful' mind Barbara

make a great pair. People like that should be steralized before they reproduce.

[C_U_L8R]

16. golly

and gee willickers
what a gosh darn fucking asshole

[ContraBass Black]

17. Froma high-status person raised in the South at that time, this sounds more like a positive

Acknowledgment of how he came to have basic respect for people different from him.

[RB TexLa]

19. Wasn't he raised in Connecticut?

[kskiska]

21. Yes - Greenwich

and Bar was from nearby Rye, NY, just over the state line. I think they met at a country club dance.

[ContraBass Black]

22. Yes.

Still, the statement seems to me more regretful and honest than disgusting.

[Oilwellian]

26. Yes, and his blue-blooded family financed Hitler

There's nothing nice about his comment.

[On the Road]

23. That's How I Read it, Too

Growing up in central New Jersey, I rarely even saw black people. I saw plenty from a distance in junior high school in eastern NC, but the town and the system were de facto segregated and the races kept pretty separate.

I was not raised to be bigoted, but because of that lack of experience, I didn't really appreciate black people's humanity because I never got to know any until the 10th grade in a Cincinnati public school.

Bush was much more sheltered. I understand what he's saying and accept it. A lot of people in his position never make that jump.

[Bluebear]

28. You didn't have to know a black person to know they are human

Even if one is a rabid bigot, you could somehow "appreciate" that they are homo sapiens, couldn't you?

[ContraBass Black]

34. I think it's more abstract than that.

A person who never meets people of different backgrounds but knows of their existence might never give thought to their life experience. When reading their mail, Bush was forced to directly observe and acknowledge their thoughts, struggles, joys, and relationships, which are the characteristics that define humanity. Thus, while knowing before that they were people, reading the mail caused him to see that they were human.

[Bluebear]

35. Well the epiphany surely didn't change his actions.

He didn't do lick to make life better for people of color.

[Oilwellian]

41. I wonder....

Do you suppose Prescott Bush knew the European Jews were people, but just didn't realize they were human when he helped finance Hitler?

[On the Road]

47. He's Saying Their Humanity Wasn't Real to Him

until he read their personal letters. Has nothing to do with whether he identified them as the species homo sapien.

(And people here complain about the literalism of fundamentalists.)

[Bluebear]

54. OK then, to be clearer: I DON'T BELIEVE A WORD OF IT

The whole thing rings false, for what we know about this dreadful family.

[TXDemGal]

18. The phrase "Bronzing the Turd" comes to mind here

As the old man gets ever closer to the grave, he and those who carry water for him know they have to do what they can to secure his so-called "legacy." This "exclusive interview" is just one instance. :puffpiece:

[Cameron27]

20. I wonder what he, Babs and the boys talk about when

they're alone. In amazing candor, I betting they'd give Imus a run for the money.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

25. Poppy said he and Shrub talked about P****Y when they were alone.

I believe that little pearl about women came out of Shrubbie Poo's mouth.

:puke: :eyes: :puke: :puke: :eyes:

[Cameron27]

38. Oh god, how disgusting.

Why am I not surprised.

[melody]

24. Another Bush coward

He tucked tail and ran -- and left his friends to die.

[mark414]

27. this actually sounds like a bit of a good thing

because of his upbringing he probably never knew any black people on a personal level...and then that task of his allowed him to see at least a bit of that personal side - any step in the right direction, even a little one...seems like a good step to me

[Bluebear]

29. So what did he think they were, animals?

He couldn't "appreciate" that they were even human until he read their mail? That must have been some upbringing!

[mark414]

33. he's a spoiled rich white kid

son of a senator...i'm not defending the guy - he probably did think they were animals and i don't have an ounce of respect for the guy. maybe i'm just reading it differently.

[The Count]

31. He thinks it sounds like a good thing. Like W saying : "I believe that people other color

than ours cam self-govern". this is them being "enlightened"

[The Count]

30. Somewhere I have a quote from Jr asking a black preacher to teach him "how

you poor people think" I had it as a signature, I may find it in old mail. They both think these are things you can brag about - "see how magnanimous I am?"

[Disturbed]

36. What did he think they were?

This is areal strange concept.

[Erika]

37. Probably what Strom Thurmond thought his black daughter was n/t

[Kurovski]

39. I'm not so sure he knows they're human now.

Nice appeal to the more sensitive racists in the Republican Party.

The horseshit just keeps piling up, don't it?

Isn't there a rumor or what-not that Bush actually contributed to the deaths of his crewmates? Something about a witness in another plane?

It could probably be googled, but I'm signing off now.

[Kurovski]

48. In case you don't remember, here's How Bush might have doomed his crew...

"Bush's Betrayal

Chester Mierzejewski, an old war buddy of Bush, who said he was angered by the "false assertions" made by candidate Bush when describing the incident, gave a different account.

After 44 years of silence, Mierzejewski, who also was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, told the New York Post that Bush had abandoned his crew to death when there was another choice.

He said he was approximately 100 feet in front of Bush's plane as the turret gunner for Squadron Commander Douglas Melvin's plane, "so close he could see in the cockpit" of Bush's bomber. Mierzejewski's close wartime buddy was one of the two crew members in Bush's plane.

According to Mierzejewski, the squadron was in a tight-formation bombing raid against a Japanese radio installation on an island reported to be heavily fortified. He saw "a puff of smoke" come from Bush's plane which quickly disappeared and was certain only one man parachuted from the plane and that it was Bush, the pilot.

Mierzejewski said the Avenger torpedo bomber was engineered so that it could successfully crash land on water and that Bush doomed his own crew by bailing out and leaving the bomber out of control."

http://www.usvetdsp.com/story46.htm

[Solly Mack]

44. shakes head

crinkles nose

[cooolandrew]

45. OK, any iraqis out there send him video messages of life in Iraq. If it worked for snr.

[symbolman]

46. They left out the part

where he used to walk on the water BETWEEN ships to get to them, and how he touched people, and they were cured of cancer, and that when he took a big old hairy shit, DOVES would come and take it away..

The SON OF A BITCHIN' COWARD KILLED HIS OWN MEN, just like his SON DOES. It's Congenital in the Bush's, goes along with that BIG YELLOW STRIPE down their back.

No one mentions that it was the rule that the Pilot of the Plane GOT ALL HIS MEN OUT FIRST, BEFORE he bailed out, if necessary HE went DOWN with the plane.

Guess who Bailed out FIRST?

Yep, George FUCKING COWARD SISSY ASS Bush Senior. Who went on to sire Bush Junior, though the best part of Junior ran down Bar's LEG.

I hate those goddamn cowards, even Jeb HID in a Broom Closet when faintly scared in Florida.

Not a single MAN in the family, unless you count BAR.. :)

[bleedingheart]

49. you post made me laugh out loud...

[symbolman]

56. Thanks! Glad to hear it, you might like my latest work..

Wait til my book is published - got some Hollywood interest now, so it's not published yet, wanna sell films rights first if possible. :)

[Virginia Dare]

51. No doubt who wears the pants in that family...

:rofl:

[butterfly77]

50. Sounds like he still doesn't think of blacks as humans...

and if he does he sounds as if they are some how a lesser human being...

[Virginia Dare]

52. No bawdy stories about Barb the Dragon Lady?

I'm shocked I tell you, she looks like one red hot momma.

[Kurovski]

53. Going through people's mail seems to be a bad habit of the Bush dynasty.

[happydreams]

55. A picture of Babs on the plane would have dealt some serious

"shock and awe" to the enemy. :bounce: