"It's only a cigarette burn,"

[luaneryder]

George W. said. "There's no scarring mark physically or mentally."

Triggered by an expose in the Yale Daily News about fraternity hazing, accusations arose that George's fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, engaged in "sadistic and obscene" initiation procedures. "The charge that has caused the most controversy on the Yale campus is that DKE applied a 'hot branding iron' to the small of the back of its 40 new members," reported the New York Times. (1967)

"I can't understand how the authors of that article can assume that Yale has to be so haughty and not to allow that type of pledging to go on at Yale," said George. As the fraternity's former president, he said the branding was done with a hot coat hanger. "It's insignificant," he said. "Totally insignificant."

Excerpt from Kelley's book The Family, page 237.
--------------------------------
Looks like he was getting primed for prison abuse.

[Jade Fox]

1. This is what Justin A Frank, MD, author of "Bush on the Couch" says....

about that statement by Bush:


By the time he was branding college lowerclassmen in fraternity
hazing hijinks, Bush's jocular sadism had metastasized into the
infliction of real physical pain--"branding each initiate just above and
in between the buttocks with the red-hot tip of a wire coathanger."
His attempt to downplay the wounds as "only a cigarette burn" offers
some insight into his frame of mind surrounding the incident, as does
a much later defense he offered an interviewer when he claimed the
procedure never left a scar. Such attempts to minimize his actions
almost defy listeners to confront Bush with the obvious question: What
kind of person would actually burn someone else with a lit cigarette?
And, as my own experience with a patient who burned herself repeatedly
with cigarettes made sadly clear, they do leave scars--every last burn.

[Eye and Monkey]

2. thus, Abu Ghraib - "just a fraternity prank"

Deeks disbanded at Tulane's campus in mid-80's - after a long and despicable history. The final straws were racist assaults of African-American female students - while dressed in blackface.

Of course, the Deeks just disbanded and formed a new "club".

[yardwork]

3. Gary Trudeau (Doonesbury) talked about this episode at Yale

He was one of shrub's classmates. I read an interview where Trudeau talked about how shrub was good at sadism.

[Eye and Monkey]

4. kick

[AmyDeLune]

5. Kick 2! n/t