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If metaphors were cigarettes, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd would be a chain smoker. Through many years and countless columns spent chronicling the fall of George H.W. Bush and the ascension of George W. Bush, Dowd has employed analogies to feudalism,The Godfather, Mini-Me, traditional "mommy" and "daddy" roles, and scores more. In this, her first book, Dowd compiles well over a hundred columns and summarizes the Bush dynasty under a single comprehensive analogy: an alternate universe calledBushworld("It's their reality. We just live and die in it.") Dowd, who as a reporter was assigned to cover the elder Bush, seems to have a soft spot for the guy even as she describes a president with no plans to do anything but remain president. But she is alarmed by the younger Bush whom she sees surrounding himself with dangerous ideologues and starting a poorly thought-out war with disastrous consequences. Each column is relatively short, and Dowd never shares much new information, but instead offers the kind of informed skeptical perspective that's essential when interpreting the public statements of policymakers. Dowd's cleverness sometimes gets in the way of clarity, and one occasionally wishes she'd quit kidding around and say something substantive, especially since the reader ofBushworldwill likely be several years removed from the news that inspired a particular column. Cleverness can be a virtue for a writer as well, getting a laugh while perfectly illustrating a point, such as when she says of the notoriously cloistered W. "All presidents are in a bubble, but the boy king was so insulated he was in a thermos." Or when she says of the Iraq War's aftermath "for the first time in history, Americans are searching for the reasons we went to war after the war is over."--John Moe
Just got it yesterday at the local Dollar Tree store. Well worth the cost for a hardback book. I will likely pass this around to many others for a fun read. I have other Bush bashing books that I also enjoyed reading. It scares me though that through him and his cronies, our ACL are being taken away, our country is being physically and ethically destroyed while collectively we turn a blind eye.
Ugh! Where to begin? First, I don't like Bush or his administration. I think he's one of the worst presidents since Jimmy Carter. In fact, he's one of the worst presidents ever. So I have a bias against anyone that defends him and a bias in favor of anyone that criticizes him. However, Dowd really pushes the rule. Despite my admitted dislike for Bush, I still couldn't stomach the endless drivel of Dowd in Bushworld. She needs a better editor. I stopped reading about 3/4 through the book. Dowd is clever and she writes well. And she can be very funny. But she is like an unoiled wind generator on a summer day: she whines endlessly as she twists from one source of hot air to another. There is no doubt that Bush is, let's say, less than a genius. In fact, most of the geniuses in the White House are less than geniuses. Rumsfeld has turned out to be a disaster that Trump would dump into the Rosie O'Donald bin. Cheney is Mr. Evil. Condi Rice reminds me of the simpering sycophants in the Wizard of Oz ready to do the bidding of a lost man who has less real substance than real illusion. Yet Dowd never mentions, let alone balances, any strengths whatsoever of these people with their limitless weaknesses. Obviously, they all rose to power because they had something, however twisted, going for them. Down provides no insight --- only a constant source of caustic comment. Her humor is always at someone else's expense. I was also nagged by a sense that Dowd was actually jealous of the Bush family. The entire book seemed to have an arrogance similar to Bush: a swaggering approach to people and their character, an "I'm more talented than you or they are" approach, an "I met famous people too" sense of entitlement. I read briefly some of the reviews of her new misogynist book on men (and women) and the sour grapes she throws at people she can't be or have. The same platform seems to permeate her writing in Bushworld. She is an equal opportunity cynic, I would have to say. She hates everyone. It would be nice to read a column or something from her that shows she admires someone or something (other than herself) and can find some little bit of strength and beauty in some difficult situation. Maybe she believes that her non-stop attacks of everything will allow us, the unwashed masses, to rise up and annoint her as screedess extraordinaire. I don't know. I don't like Bush, but I certainly wouldn't elect her either. [[ASIN:0595406092 The Perfect President]]Gun Tottin' at the White House You can judge a book by its cover. Just take a look at political cartoonist Pat Oliphant's cover for Maureen Dowd's Bushworld. It is unlike any other book cover you have ever seen. It shows a short, swaggering, gun-toting cowboy in a Texas ten gallon hat, walking determinedly straight out the gates of the White House, his fingers itching a mere inches away from his six shooters, ready to blow away, just outside the gates, any uncivilized varmint who threatens the territory.
Like Oliphant's dark, witty, and stylish cover, Bushworld etches into your political awareness a series of crosshatchings and lines that connect and define the characters in the Bushworld play that we are forced to live and sometimes die in.
What is remarkable is that this is Maureen Dowd's first book. She is a New York Times Op-Ed columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author for her distinguished commentary on the Clinton impeachment. She approached and wrote Bushworld nearly as stylistic as James Joyce approached and unveiled Ulysses. Every chapter opens with a clever title; every chapter uses a different format, a literary style that necessarily and wittingly reflects its content. She classically defines the Shakespearean characters who tromp around on our current political stage as if these characters were somehow by her own creative hand lifted right off the Elizabethan stage and plopped smartly down into the pages of her book. In rapidly-crafted snippets and metaphors, she captures the essentials of past literary works and characters. She draws upon a spectrum of movies and television shows from past and present to paint a picture of the times in which we live. Comparing politicians, world leaders, and international events to characters and plots in The Godfather, The Wizard of Oz, It's A Wonderful Life, Father Knows Best, and Ozzie and Harriet, Dowd cleverly defines the myths of our times.
Dowd draws upon the witty satire of Voltaire, the absurdities of Orwellian logic to underline a point, the tragic events inspired by Aeschylean plots, and the deep psychological effects of the Greeks' Oedipal complex to reveal the deeply troubled personality (a "Roman Candle" as she puts it) of the President of the United States, who is a young cocky Sheriff, trying to outdo his father, who was also the territory's right arm of the law. But this Young Sheriff wants to bring Peace to Dodge by picking a gunfight at high noon on main street. Fully aware and brandishing his Wild West machismo, the cocky young Sheriff is manipulated by a group of dirty, politically-scheming businessmen and respected members of the town council who pay his salary and conspire about who it is that the upstart Sheriff will face-off and shoot in the name of Justice and where the duel will take place.
[...] [...] [...].
According to Dowd, we are living in a Bush World, a world that is a living circus, incomprehensible, full of illogic, greed and gall, and absurdly humorous.
In the midst of all the treachery and psycho-political connections, even the Bushworld dedication reveals Maureen Dowd's ironic and healthy humor. The author is so smart, so "tuned into" the dealings and misdealings of Capital Hill politics, so versed in the literary classics past and present, so attentive to the roots of Old Europe and the changes of the new Euro World, so adept at recognizing the inner psychological pulls and tugs of world leaders and understanding how their dysfunctions manipulate and cast a dark shadow of terror and greed upon a constantly-changing paranoid world. Knowing all of this, Maureen Dowd can still take a small step backwards and say in the dedication of her book: "For my mom, who thinks all the Bushes are swell." You gotta laugh.
