Blech

E&P:

Surely the comic highlight of President George W. Bush's mountain bike ride with seven journalists at his ranch this weekend occurred when USA Today writer Sal Ruibal stopped at a tree and urinated.

"Ruibal, don't worry,” the president said, maintaining his “regular guy” demeanor. “The last one that peed there was a cow."

Is it just me? I think I have a pretty good sense of humor, but I can’t figure out how that’s supposed to be funny. If that was the “comic highlight” of the day, them’s some pretty slim pickins.

All this ho-ho, ain’t-the-preznit-a-fun-guy jollity is reported under the annoying headline, “Bike Riding With Bush Gives White House Reporters New Perspective on President,” the kind of story which I honestly cannot believe is still being written on this jagoff trust-funder playing cowboy. That’s so not a new perspective, that the suggestion is laughable. The only thing that kept me from vomiting was the snickering that ensued when I applied the headline to the following paragraph:

According to participants, Bush had opened his latest 17-mile, two-hour, trek with what comedian Bill Maher might call “New Rules”-- principally that no one would be allowed to pass him on the trail.

Yeah, I guess having to stare at the president’s ass for two hours is technically getting a “new perspective.”

It’s simply amazing to me that a story reporting an edict which would remind even the most lackluster student of history of the command of a king forbidding any head to be higher than his own, can also reference the president’s alleged “regular guy” demeanor. You know, Mr. Shakes used to mountain bike regularly in the Highlands with his friends, and I can only imagine how well it would have gone over if one of those “regular guys” had turned to the others and said, “Right, no one passes me today.” Any git who had the temerity to say something like that would have been promptly thumped—because regular guys don’t act like that. That Bush is anything but an overindulged, overgrown brat is one of the greatest fallacies of my lifetime.

And by the way, how many “regular guys” make a point of commenting on each other’s urinations?

“Good stream there, Joe!”

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

(Crossposted at Shakespeare’s Sister.)