Oilman Bush has gas in background
By Margery Eagan
Boston Herald Columnist
Maybe if Iraq were going better, I’d chalk this up to some cowboy thing.“Blazing Saddles Does D.C.”
As it is, I worry that the supposed leader of the free world is trapped in the body of a 7-year-old and hiding a Whoopie Cushion under his bed.
Has Dubya lost it?
Anyway, here’s the news, such as it is. U.S. New & World Reports’ Paul Bedard says our commander in chief “loves flatulence jokes . . . can’t get enough of fart jokes. He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides.”
In an interview yesterday, Bedard, who writes “Washington Whispers” for the weekly newsmagazine, also said he’s heard about Bush’s full-salute “Austin Greeting.” That’s when new aides come in for their “meet and greet.”
“Word is,” says Bedard, “he likes to gas a couple, and then bring the aide in and see what the kid’s face looks like.”
Naturally, the aide can’t accuse the President or grimace or hold his nose. This dilemma apparently drives the presidential funny bone wild.
So does this mean our president farts on command?
“It’s all in what you eat, I guess . . . beans, nachos,” Bedard told me yesterday.
Does he do this with Cheney, Rummy and Rove?
“You mean the old farts?” says Bedard. “I like to think so.”
OK, almost no one I talked to yesterday shared my reaction to all this, which is, gross, gross, gross. Can you even envision Mitt Romney? John Kerry? Te-ray-za?
Imagine the scene with Bush. Some nervous, excited and unsuspecting 25-year-old - male, let’s hope - is about to shake hands with the most powerful man on earth, and then, well, George makes his own unique contribution to global warming.
As for the scene with Cheney et. al? Oh, banish it from the brain!
Yet most everybody else said this reveals George as a regular guy.
Then they made jokes. “Dyslexia rears its ugly head,” said Becky Swope. “He’s not a frat boy!”
“He’s just ringing the Taco Bell!” said Jeff, who owns a pet store in Salem and didn’t want his last name used, for obvious reasons.
We’ll protect, too, my sober, downtown law firm friend Stephen, lest he get fired: “As a new young intern in the White House, which would you rather have the president say, ‘Pull my finger,’ or ‘Have a cigar?’ ”
That’s my point. Gross.
So too the bodily habits of previous presidents, most notably Lyndon Johnson, who scratched his crotch at Cabinet meetings, held other meetings while sitting on the toilet and pulled up his shirt to display an ample stomach surgery scar.
I did not know this until yesterday. (I wish I still didn’t know it.) Harry Truman publicly belched and passed gas. Bess, how could you allow it!
But when you add up all Dubya’s shenanigans, he’s already beaten his predecessors by a Texas mile. Just last month he sneak-attacked German chancellor Angela Merkel, delivering an unwanted neck and back rub in the midst of the staid Group of Eight Summit.
Every time he’s close to bald-head strangers, he starts rubbing their head. What’s that about? He’s big into “noogies” as well.
Maybe this is a gender thing. Several men, but no women, told me they remember sitting around with buddies having loudest bodily function contests when they were young. The key word there, however, is “young.”
But this latest leak from the Bush White House does explain a lot, doesn’t it? All those furrowed brows and deer-in-the-headlights pauses in his speeches and press conferences. And that devilish litle laugh.
Now we know: something else could be going on there. I’ll never look at George again without wondering.
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