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               | You're outraged? What about us?
June 28, 2002 (asticles.com) -- Only hours after looking the nation straight in the eye in that peculiarly vapid permanently-middle-of-the-table baseball-team-owner way he has and blurting, "The revelations that WorldCom has misaccounted $3.4 billion is outrageous," the president hurried back behind a batch of microphones in front of a flag or two (or, if not immediately practical, an idyllic bucolic outdoor scene of flowers, lawns and trees and, if humanly possible, doves, mating squirrels and bees with blue cloud-free skies and snowcapped mountains in the far distance) to express more sheer unmitigated indignity. This time it was because someone else in the federal employ who will pay dearly for the luxury has been tampering with the word "God" in public schools where most kids never graduate if they live that long or if they do prove incapable of spelling any word containing more vowels and consonants than the word 'God' himself and/or adding (or seeing) any amount larger than $3.40. This brings to nine the number of times this week (well, nine we've been told about) that the president has been cheesed off about something and it was still only Thursday evening. On Monday, readers with extremely long memories will recall, Bush got himself, and Wolf Blitzer, all steamed-up about having the equally-mysteriously-elected president of the incarcerated Palestinian ghetto-people, Yassir Arafat, removed from office immediately. Or else. This reminded many wizened old White House soap-saga game-show fans of some months ago (is it only some months ago?) when he furiously admonished Ariel Sharon to get out of what remains of what used to be called Palestine 'immediately'. Or else. And when asked what 'immediately' meant Condoleezza Rice said, equally-outraged, "Now!" But that's a whole other story. On Tuesday he apparently displayed his violent tizzy (mercifully off camera) when told his outraged plan to create a supra-home-security agency with 175,000 employees at less cost to the taxpayer than had been wiped off Wall Street that afternoon in late trading as crack insiders and CNNfn announcers dumped their worthless WorldCom (and whatever else we haven't heard about yet, like possibly Xerox) stock was running into difficulty in the Senate since the people assigned to set it up after his 67th outraged speech were scurrying to implement his 69th 'remove Arafat' exhortation. Wednesday was a particularly uncomfortable outraged day for him when UN Secretary General Kofi Annan hurried behind a batch of microphones in front of 176 flags to contradict the 'remove Arafat' instructions by saying 'he's as legitimately-elected as most other presidents I know and anyway that news pales in comparison to the fact that millions are dying of hunger in Africa and Afghanistan and of AIDS in China.' According to White House insiders (thought to be Colin Powell himself, who hasn't been seen in public for months and who is said to be hardballing and eyeballing for top bucks with top blue-chip telecommunications companies eager to avoid being caught manipulating pension plans and profits and thereby putting thousands of offshore Caribbean villas in jeopardy), "He wasn't mad at Annan saying what he did, that's legitimate politics although my dear friend Kofi may face stiff opposition next time the UN needs a new Secretary General and I'm Chairman and CEO of AT&T, no, he wants to know where they got all those flags." The 7th bout of umbrage occurred yesterday in deepest, darkest Canada -- at a moment when everything for a major public display of exasperation was perfect. The microphones. The flags. The birds and the bees. And some of the finest snowcapped mountains ever used for a public display of acrimony. But when told the media were 80 miles away in an hermetically-sealed hotel bar with unlimited quantities of Canadian Club and Crown Royal, he turned on his 7 other G8 members -- if we may call them that -- and vented his entire spleen. And finally (since that's just about enough outrage from one president for a very long time thank you very much, and we have it on the best authority from Condoleezza herself who was there at his side when it happened), nothing he has said or done this year made him as angry -- if not downright personally miffed -- as seeing Tony Blair (even after 10 laps in a cold Canadian pool) defying even himself under the shower.   Copyright © 2002, David Marsden/asticles.com. Reprinted with permissionCopyright © 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, American Politics Journal Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Read our privacy policy. Contact us. ISSN No. 1523-1690 | |||