Whenever I clumsily attempt humor in one of my columns, I am inevitably barraged by e-mails from readers who just didn’t get the joke.
In last week’s column I used sarcasm that I assumed was about as subtle as a brick to the face. I guess I was mistaken, because a number of my liberal readers were genuinely shocked that I would blame John Kerry for the death of our soldiers in Iraq.
“You are totally crazy, nuts and full of it,” one of my adoring fans wrote. “You are on crack.”
“Congratulations on the worst bit of logic I have ever seen in print,” wrote another.
Perhaps these liberals, so accustomed to pundits saying outrageous things, have become blind to sarcasm. Or perhaps they are fanatics.
The first sign of fanaticism is the inability to appreciate art, in this case the art of humor. Art requires one to look beyond the surface to find deeper meanings. But the fanatic, so clouded by his or her absolute worldview, cannot see past the literal meaning of things and therefore is not amused. The Taliban is the perfect example.
We have many humorless fanatics in the White House: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Ashcroft and Karl Rove to name a few. Is it just me or do these guys look like Batman villains? Can’t they hire somebody to teach them how to avoid looking evil? On television, Dick Cheney makes Dick Nixon look like a Teletubby.
I don’t think the president belongs with this group. Bush is a likable guy who is well-known for his sense of humor. That is why it has always perplexed me when liberals describe him as a Christian right-wing fanatic. How can they say that? He just doesn’t fit the fanatical mold.
At least that is what I once believed. But recently I had an epiphany. Yes, George W. Bush is a fanatic, but he is a much more rare breed: He is the fanatic who cannot take anything seriously.
After I realized this, the last four years suddenly became clear. All of Bush’s incomprehensible actions, which I used to blame on his stupidity or his past alleged cocaine abuse, were infused with new meaning.
Why did Bush on Sept. 11, after learning that terrorists were attacking the United States, continue to read to a room full of children? He couldn’t take the terrorists seriously. And he really wanted to finish that book; after all, it had been a while since he read a book all by himself.
Why did Bush do nothing when he received a memo entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”? He couldn’t take the memo seriously.
And let’s not forget when Bush went to the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner in March and joked about the lack of WMDs in Iraq. A photo of Bush looking under a rug in the White House was projected on the wall. “Nope. No WMDs under here,” Bush said. Several U.S. soldiers died the next day.
The proof of Bush’s “humorous fanaticism” even predates his presidency. During an interview with Talk magazine in 1999, Bush made fun of a woman he had recently put to death in Texas. “Please don’t kill me,” Bush said mocking the desperation in her voice.
Gary Bower, the right-wing Christian fanatic who, ironically, looks like Satan, was flabbergasted at Bush’s remarks. “I think it is nothing short of unbelievable that the governor of a major state running for president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death,” he said, according to the Houston Chronicle.
He added: “I do not believe he is serious about the sanctity of life.”
Exactly! Bush cannot take anything seriously. He cannot take seriously the warnings from his own environmentalists about global warming. He cannot take seriously the warnings from his own economists about our unprecedented deficits. He can’t take Colin Powell seriously. He can’t take the opinion of the international community seriously.
To summarize: If Vice President Cheney is the Penguin, then President Bush is the Joker. And I think I see the Bat Signal in the distance …