flashback- "who cares what you think. . .?"

[stellanoir]

How *'s fundamental mean spiritedness is not more obvious to more people continuously baffles me.

I was just cleaning out my inbox and found this gem (e-mail-n/l) from July of '01. I'm sure many of you saw it back then but thought some might have missed it and others might enjoy the refresher. . .

"The following communique from "Bill Hangley Jr." has become a bit of an underground classic of late. "Bill Hangley" is a Philadelphia personage with ties to politics and the media.

"So, when the president was here on July 4, I had the opportunity to shake his hand. I wasn't sure if that was a good idea or not, but I did it anyway, and said to him, `Mr. President, I hope you only serve four years. I'm very disappointed in your work so far.'

"He kept smiling and shaking my hand, but answered, `Who cares what you think?' His face stayed photo-op perfect, but his eyes gave me a look that said, if we'd been drinking in some frat house in Texas, he'd've happily answered, `let's take it outside' -- a nasty little gleam. But he was (fortunately) constrained by presidential propriety.

"But that was the end of it, until I turned away and started scribbling the quote down in my notepad, so as to remember The Gift forever. When he saw me do that, he got excited and craned his neck over the rubberneckers to shout at me, "Who are you with? Who are you with?" People started looking, so he made a joke: "Make sure you get it right." But he kept at it: "Who do you write for?" I told him I wasn't "with" anybody and pointed to one of his staff people, who knows me a little, and said, "Ask him. He'll tell you." Then I split.

Half an hour later, my boss (who had helped organize the event we were at) came up to me and said, `Did you really tell the president that he was doing a lousy fucking job?' No way, I said. I was very polite. I just told him what I thought. Fortunately, he believed me. He wasn't happy with me, but he believed me."

"Anyway, if you ever wondered if the prez really was kind of a jerk, I'm here to tell you, he is, and I got The Gift to prove it. I'm thinking of making up T-shirts so we can share The Gift with everyone: "Who cares what you think?"

-- President George W. Bush, July 4, 2001

And more recently. . .

"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." - George W. Bush, Bush at War.

How does he get away with such arrogance?

I wish a 527 ad would feature these two quotations followed by the more recent and more scathing commentary from that Iraqi soccer player which went something like. . ."how does he live with himself, being responsible for so many deaths. . .?"
They would illustrate a really accurate summation of his character and precisely why he's so dangerous.