Monday, November 8, 2010

Barbara Bush's Miscarriage

Salon:

"In the weirdest news item of the day, the New York Post reveals that when George W. Bush was a teenager, his mother, Barbara, showed him her miscarried fetus in a jar. 'There's no question that affected me, a philosophy that we should respect life,' he tells Matt Lauer in an interview that will air tonight. This bizarre anecdote may make Barbara sound like a pro-life extremist who used scare tactics to sway her son's views of abortion, but what the Post doesn't mention is that the former first lady eventually became pro-choice."


You know, I think it's probably wrong to frame this in terms of the abortion politics when what this story is is really, really freakin' weird. A miscarriage, after all, isn't a choice -- but keeping the fetus afterward surely is. So much of the George W. Bush biography has been written as an Oedipal need to show up his accomplished father. But is it possible we're missing out on the real story here? What if Barbara Bush is really closer to being Angela Lansbury in "The Manchurian Candidate" -- and the key to understanding everything, in a really weird and dark and twisted way? Somewhere, an aspiring political novelist is writing an outline....

1 comment:

brendancalling said...

This kind of weirdness isn't uncommon among right-wing republicans. Rick Santorum and his wife famously brought home their stillborn preemie for their children to hold and cuddle before burying it (i think in the back yard).

you can look it up: totally fucked up. they totally fetish dead babies like victorians do.