Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The Day We Waited Eight Years For
As Maureen Dowd noted this morning in her New York Times Op/ed piece, it was a Greek chorus moment yesterday when four million eyes watched a machine of the gods lift George W. Bush out of our lives and carry him off to oblivion.
“Everyone, it seemed,” Dowd said, “was waving goodbye, with one or two hands, a wave that moved westward down the Mall toward the Lincoln Memorial, and keeping their eyes fixed unwaveringly on that green bird...they wanted to make absolutely, positively certain that W. was gone.”
Gone! Oh happy happy day!!
In recapping Obama’s oath of office and inauguration speech, however, Dowd gave the former president too much credit when she said, “With W. looking on, and probably gradually realizing with irritation who Mr. Obama’s target was ...the newly minted president let him have it.”
I doubt that GWB ever realized he was Obama’s target when Obama said, "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals...those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake...false promises...and childish things."
As a matter of fact, I doubt GWB understood Obama’s speech at all, since it was eloquent and composed of words of three or more syllables.
And can we get one thing straight? Dick Cheney was not in a wheelchair because he had strained his back lifting heavy boxes the day before. Cheney hires people to do his heavy lifting--both the metaphorical kind and the real kind. Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair because that is the way he has to get around. Cheney was in a wheelchair because he is a sick, enfeebled, old man...a sick, mean, nasty, vitriolic, embittered old man. And his wheelchair was pushed to the sidelines with the greatest speed so that he didn’t have a chance to thumb his nose or flip the bird to his successor Joe Biden and the new Commander-in-Chief.
That great day—1-20-09, Bush’s Last Day—has come and gone and the parties are over. And a new day of hope for the future has come.
Now, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, it is up to us to be the change we want to see in the world.
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2 comments:
No, I think it is thoroughly plausible that Cheney got a back spasm by lifting books. He's also feeble and ill, but that only makes it more likely that he hurt himself, because he would more likely have had bad posture. The last time I had that happen, it was merely packing clothes, not lifting anything heavy at all.
The way I heard it, Cheney was moving books. Probably they were spellbooks.
(This stupid system won't log me in; I probably have to stand on my head while deleting cookies with my left ring finger. Have I mentioned yet how much I hate blogger?)
You say, "Cheney was in a wheelchair because he is a sick, enfeebled, old man...a sick, mean, nasty, vitriolic, embittered old man."
I use wheels--is it because I am a sick, mean, nasty, vitriolic, embittered young woman? Is this really what you think of wheelchair users, that we're evil? If you take out prejudice, what's wrong with using a wheelchair?
Cheney is these things anyway. Let's not harm people with disabilities by perpetuating highly negative stereotypes. What if someone did the same with race?
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