Bush addresses Oklahoma State commencement (photo: Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP)There are oh so many descriptive phrases that come to mind regarding George Bush: hopelessly out of touch, disengaged, defeated. But now add a new one: dinosaur. The NY Times quotes this passage from his commencement address at that hotbed of free-thinking intellectual fervor, Oklahoma State University:
“When I was in college, we listened to music on 45 r.p.m. records as opposed to the iPod,” Mr. Bush said. “We used manual typewriters instead of the personal computer. When we made a mistake while writing a paper, we didn’t have the luxury of spell-check. As a matter of fact, we used something that maybe some of you have heard of. It was big and bulky; it’s called a dictionary.”
I’m certain that he spent a lot of time spinning those 45s, but as for typing term papers and cracking that dictionary–those sound like fantasies to me. It’s amazing to me that a person Bush’s age would try to present himself to a college audience as so hopelessly quaint and out of touch with modern technology. Especially if you consider that the modern American president has just about every technological innovation available right at his fingertips. Chalk it up to yet another tone-deaf Bush performance.
I’ve heard in progressive blogs that in her NYT coverage of the Bush administration Elizabeth Bumiller is a shill for the Bushies (I personally don’t buy it). But you can’t say that about this passage in her article describing Bush’s address:
Mr. Bush made no mention of the war in Iraq, high gas prices or other problems confronting the nation. Instead he painted an optimistic picture of America and said that “the job market for college graduates is the best it’s been in years,” even in the face of weak job growth reported by the government on Friday.
He also regaled them with the earth-shatteringly bold pronouncement:
President Bush told 2,700 graduates of Oklahoma State University on Saturday that advances in technology presented them with choices and dilemmas as they faced a future “at one of the most hopeful moments in human history.”
Bush is a veritable Pangloss as he tells anyone who’ll listen that “all’s for the best in this best of all possible world.”
