Plans for Bush library stir Texas-size tempest

[cal04]

For Southern Methodist University, the alma mater of First Lady Laura Bush and a proud, nearly century-old institution, the prospect of housing the George W. Bush Presidential Library would seemingly be an honor.

Yet the possible advent of the Bush library—and especially an ideological think tank planned as part of it—has split the SMU faculty, feeding a debate that simmers beneath the serenity of the leafy campus. At an institution dedicated to scholarly achievement and academic freedom, many fear the work of the Bush Institute would forever associate SMU with a right-wing political agenda.

The vision of a Bush-backed think tank at a campus owned by the United Methodist Church has exposed emotional rifts within a church already divided over the war in Iraq. Bishops and other clergy critical of the pre-emptive war and the administration's treatment of enemy combatants are protesting what they view as a memorial to Bush, a Methodist whose policies they say are "antithetical" to their teachings.

Rev. C. Joseph Sprague, a recently retired Chicago-area Methodist bishop, summed up the sentiment of several bishops protesting the Bush Institute.

"I am hesitant to see Southern Methodist University welcoming the institute of a Methodist who has been so contrary to the teachings of the Methodist Church," he said. "It will do nothing but perpetuate the kind of neocon thinking of this administration which has taken both this nation and the world in the wrong direction."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-library_bdapr08,1,4598170.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

[liberal N proud]

1. It will not require much space

Just a couple of coloring books and a bible?

[clydefrand]

8. Thanks for the best laugh I've had in a long time! BUT,

who will read him the Bible and show him which crayons to use?

[liberal N proud]

9. I forgot My Pet Goat will be included for historical reference

The day bu$h did nothing

[zonmoy]

20. the bible.

doesn't he have anything more evil. is there anything more evil than the bible.

[SammyWinstonJack]

28. "Is there anything more evil than the bible?" Yeah there is, it's george using the bible for his own

political gains, which he always does.

[SammyWinstonJack]

24. george will have no use for the bible when he is out of office. It was just a tool he used to get

the religious fanatics to back him. He's about as religious as I am, which is a NOT AT ALL. His "born again" status was cooked up by Karl Rove to get the religious wackos to vote for him back when he was running for Tx Gov. And they fell for it, hook line and stinker! :evilgrin: As for the coloring books, george has the attention span of less than a two year old and I bet he colors outside the lines. :rofl:

[Liberal Veteran]

2. How big of an outhouse is needed to store a copy of The Pet Goat?

:shrug:

[tularetom]

3. What don't they like about "My Pet Goat"?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. Our local Methodist church

willingly allowed our peace group to have teach-ins and meetings there, despite the fact that our country is red, and there were several nutcases proclaiming things like Bush was the Second Coming (this was 2003). So I can see why the Methodists are up in arms over this library.

[MethuenProgressive]

5. How many copies of "Fortunate Son" will they have...

...compared to "My Pet Goat"?

[napi21]

6. Can they refuse tolet him put his library there?

i don't know who's winning in this dispute, but I think it would be hysterical if SMU turned him down!!!! Awe, poor baby just might have to put it on the pig farm!

[Cabcere]

16. I hope this "presidential library" thing gets rejected everywhere they try to put it.

Seriously, what self-respecting institution would want a tangible memory of that asshat associated with them? :shrug:

[LongTomH]

7. How will scholars be able to get any studying done at the Bush library

...........with the industrial paper shredders going in the back room 24 hours a day? :evilgrin:

[Peace Patriot]

10. This is the thing. In order to have a presidential library, you have to have people

who care what Bush said and did. For starters. I think most people would just like to forget it, at this point. Pretend it didn't happen. Secondly, the president for whom the library is created has to have been elected, and not an usurper. As it is, whoever is funding this will be creating a monument to a rotten, lying, murdering torturing, Constitution-destroying dictator. I wouldn't mind seeing his true nature memorialized, so that we don't forget--never forget!--but something tells me that that is not what the billionaires behind this have in mind. So it will be a false and ugly thing. And, because no self-respecting academic or researcher could pour over Bush's "papers" without vomiting, and, really, who cares?, it will be used for more "think tank" brilliance like we've seen the Bush Junta use in the Middle East and on the rightwing's rampage through our institutions and laws. Do we want more of that? No. We want the fascists not to think. So, no more "think tanks."

What else could a "George Bush Library" be used for? How about for burning books?

We could build a sort of temple and do a ritual burnings of books by John Kenneth Galbraith and other progressive thinkers, books on evolution, books on global warming and other environmental science, every week, say. And do chants and dances around the pyre to beg the forgiveness of the Muses. We could throw in some old Beatles records, too. OR, we could just burn rightwing books. They publish so much tripe, we wouldn't be doing harm to the intelligence of the human race. And it would be justice.

The Burning Book Library. Fitting tribute to the stupidest man ever to hold power over us.

The best George Bush "Library" would be a House of Horrors, a place of vast empty spaces, where recordings of the screams of his torture victims are broadcast over the sound system. No books.

But I grow grim.

The opportunities for mockery are delicious to think of. If some institution of higher learning prostitutes itself enough to host George Bush's Presidential Library, I hope we can get a millionaire to fund the George Bush Presidential Anti-Library nearby--a place for artistic and political expression of our loathing for George Bush and everything he stands for. We could have regular exhibitions--the book burning idea (add burnings and ripping ups of the Constitution), the "House of Horrors," the 9/11 Show, a Quote Exhibition (featuring the stupidest things he ever said), paintings, plays, all memorializing our anger and our revulsion; we could have a George Bush Anti-Theater Group doing medieval morality plays explaining various laws he broke and sins he committed; an exhibition of clever soldier adaptations to the poor equipment Bush provided them (the sanitary napkin as a sweatband is a good one, and jerry-rigged jeep armor, etc.); we could have the "rats and cockroaches" show to memorialize veterans' care, and Katrina Month with replicas of bloated bodies and elderly black citizens dying in their own shit in their wheelchairs, and an Execution Show featuring Saddam Hussein's hanging and all the Texas fryings and items like that weird video of Nick Berg's beheading; we could have a Freeper Show; we could have a special Dick Cheney Room. Think of the possibilities!

[Bluebear]

11. Some library. A colorforms Bible set and My Pet Goat. nt

[sutz12]

27. I hear they are adding a pop-up Intelligent Design book...

Complete with autographed pictures of Noah riding dinosaurs.

[Decruiter]

12. DU'ers and Methodists need to support those of us in Dallas opposed to

this absolute travesty. This library, in Dallas, at SMU is absolutely the last thing we should allow.

The means by which they have acquired the land they propose to build it on is in itself a travesty of justice.

Please help us in Dallas to stop this.

Thanks. More later today.

Dallas has to live with JFK last day here, do we really need to follow it up with Bush's legacy on this earth? I hope not. If this library flies and Dubya and Laura come home to roost here in Dallas I can think of no better reason to leave and say see ya to Dallas forever. Lots more will follow.

[MetaTrope]

13. Is Bush's "Presidential Records Act" still locking away papers from the last three presidents?

Might as well just rent a storage unit and forget the library part.

[UTUSN]

14. K&R #1 n/t

[krispos42]

15. The anti-tourist attraction

It would actually drive people away from the area. Empty parking lots, people staying out of line-of-sight of it. Nearby businesses putting blackout curtains on windows facing the library and signs that say "Use rear entrance".

Locals pretend to never know what visitors are talking about when the library is mentioned. Local chamber of commerce looks blank when asked for directions. Not on any maps or official websites.

[cal04]

17. new link added.

I couldn't get the other one to work

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0704070293apr08,1,147124.story

[many a good man]

18. They should locate it in the old Abu Ghraib prison

Neocon scholars will flock there (after visiting "Bush Square" in downtown Baghdad).

[formercia]

19. So, why not Yale?

I wonder if they even asked....

[Ino]

21. These libraries are tax-supported!

"while private donors have erected the libraries and the museums that accompany them, taxpayers bear the cost of administering the facilities, which totals more than $40 million annually."

I don't think our tax dollars should fund a Repug think tank!

[jmowreader]

22. Bush's library will look like my overheads the day after Memorial Day

The problem with building a presidential library for Bush is this: Presidential libraries should really be called presidential museums. They contain artifacts from the president's term for future scholars to learn from. Bush has two kinds of artifacts from his administration: shit that's too embarrassing for words--the "Mission Accomplished" banner off the Kennedy, Saddam's pistol, the rubber turkey--and everything else, which Bush has classified and hidden from public view.

No one is going to want to study Bush's rubber turkey. "Our Great President found out that Senator Hillary Clinton was going to go to Afghanistan to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the troops. Not wanting to be upstaged by the wife of the president who was impeached over a blowjob, he made a secret flight to Baghdad, where he grabbed this rubber turkey and waved it around in front of a bunch of soldiers. He told them he was 'just in search of a hot meal' but failed to actually eat any of the food at the dinner, which means he either ate on the plane and was lying about having to fly halfway around the world looking for food or his imperial taster hadn't eaten any of it and he was afraid the cook, who was already pissed off because he had to spend Thanksgiving in a fucking sandstorm, would have slipped something in the meal. It turns out he did: the cook put twenty pounds of piracetam, a "smart drug," in the mashed potatoes. Turns out it wouldn't have done anything anyway: it only works on an existing brain."

[rug]

23. The septic tank would bust the endowment.

[Supersedeas]

25. an association with a right-wing agenda....uh, yeah

[WiseButAngrySara]

26. Excellent! At least they are still free to express their opinions.

:kick: and R!

[WiseButAngrySara]

29. Sign this petition! T.O. wrote about it in January, and I signed it

then. So far, about 10,500 have submitted their John Hancock's!
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011807T.shtml
http://www.google.com/search?q=petition+library+methodist&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8

Petition Link:
http://www.protectsmu.or

THE PETITION

We the undersigned express our objection to the prospect of the George W. Bush library, museum, and think tank being established at Southern Methodist University. As United Methodists, we believe that the linking of his presidency with a university bearing the Methodist name is utterly inappropriate. We urge the Board of Trustees of Southern Methodist University and the South Central Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church to reject this project.

Signed:
BISHOPS

Joe A. Wilson
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
Georgetown, TX 78628

William Boyd Grove
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
Charleston, WV 25311

Alfred W. Gwinn, Jr.
Bishop
The United Methodist Church
Raleigh, North, Carolina 27605

Joseph C. Sprague
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
London, OH 43140

Joseph H. Yeakel
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
Smithsburg, MD 21783

Hope Morgan Ward
Bishop
The United Methodist Church
Jackson, MS 39205

Susan Murch Morrison,
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
Rehoboth Beach, DE 19971

Dale C. White
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
Newport RI 02840

Judith Craig
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
Powell, OH 43065

Kenneth W. Hicks
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
Little Rock AR 72205

Calvin D. McConnell
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
Portland, OR 97222

Jesse R. DeWitt
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
Dexter MI 48130

Charles W. Hancock,
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
Macon GA 31210

Alfred Johnson
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
New York, NY 10011

Rüdiger Minor
Bishop, Retired
The United Methodist Church
Dresden, Germany

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011807T.shtml

[SoCalDem]

30. SMU... just say NO.

Make him build it in Crawford :)

[liberal renegade]

31. Bush Library= Oxymoron

[grannylib]

32. What's the big deal? A little table in the corner for Georgie's coloring books and

crayons, and several copies of My Pet Goat and a little nap pad and the little feet taped to the floor to make sure he doesn't forget the way to the potty and the time-out corner...