Academic

Bush is Still Bush

By Sherrilyn Ifill

I tried calling my political junkie friends and family members to commiserate with me during President Bush?s Monday night State of the Union address, but no one was having it.  ?Why are you watching that?? was a typical response.  One family member said, ?I haven?t watched him give the State of the Union in 7 years and I?m not gonna start now.?  Yet another friend planned to get liquored-up during the address, to celebrate the fact that at least this would be Bush?s last address. So I had to go it alone. What can I tell you?  It?s a habit.

Maybe it was good that I watched Bush deliver the State of the Union. It was a bracing reminder that it will be more than a year before any of the candidates running for president will be in a position to do any of the things they say they?ll do.  In the meantime, the suffering of Americans losing their homes and jobs continues, we continue offering up our soldiers in Iraq in a war that was illegal at the start and seems to have no end, we live under a government that still refuses to reject outright the use of torture and that tries detainees in legal proceedings that make a mockery of due process.  Gas prices remain at an all time high, and the cost of college education continues to rise, pushing higher education increasingly out of reach for all but a small percentage of young people, and America?s standing in the world remains in the toilet.

Bush, of course, had nothing new to say.  He was the same as always, rejecting the opportunity to come clean with the American people, and choosing instead to aggressively step to Congress about issues that are mostly irrelevant to Americans trying to figure out how they can afford to fill the tank of the car, or how they?ll make the next mortgage payment.  He was defiant, and obnoxious, and just enormously irritating.

Then it seemed, just to piss me off further, Bush decided to come to Baltimore the next morning to push for an extension of his faith-based initiative.  First he mucked up traffic downtown for hours.  Then he visited a program called Jericho, run by the Episcopal Services in Baltimore, which has received half a million dollars from the federal government to work with ex-offenders, many of whom are drug-addicted.  There, Bush referred to his past days as a drunk.  The Washington Post declared, ?Bush Talks of Past Addiction.?  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/29/AR2008012902996.html?nav=hcmodule  Yeah, right.   No, what Bush actually said was, ?I drank too much at one time in my life.? http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-bush0129,0,6389022.story  I thought, you know I drank too much at one point in my life too.  It was called college.

Like saying, ?there were no weapons of mass destruction,? the guy still can?t utter the words, ?I was an alcoholic.?  Instead, he made the confession shared by almost every frat boy or secret society member at Yale in the ?60s: he ?drank too much.?  Not exactly a stunning admission likely to resonate with recovering addicts.

There are approximately 60,000 heroin addicts in Baltimore. The problems they face in finding treatment are real and often overwhelming.  Being brutally honest about their own faults and flaws, and especially about their addiction, is a key part of the day-to-day work of recovering addicts.  And here?s the President of the United States, whose lifelong position of privilege and wealth enabled him to live as a functioning private addict, punting the ball on a moment that called for absolute honesty and an admission of commonality with the struggle addicts face.

But Bush is always Bush.  And just as he couldn?t use his final State of the Union address to come clean — just a little bit — with the people about the economy, the war in Iraq or any of his other disastrous policies, so too was Bush incapable of just talking straight to a group of men who are struggling against nearly insurmountable odds to make a new life for themselves on the outside.  So just as on Monday night Bush told the American public ?our economy is undergoing a period of uncertainty,? so too on Tuesday he told a group of struggling and ex-addicts ?I used to drink a lot.?  What?s the harm in a little understatement?

I know I shouldn?t let it bother me.  Whether it?s on primetime television, or on a   street in Baltimore, they?re all just staged moments and canned remarks in President Bush?s boring and insulting set of theatrical presentations.  But it?s a reminder that despite all the talk of ?hope? and ?change? and ?transcendence? in the presidential primary race, it?s probably good to keep in mind that we?ve still got another year of life with Bush.

By the way, taking nothing away from the important work of the Episcopal Services, there are other secular organizations that do great work with ex-offenders in Baltimore.  These organizations haven?t received a half a million dollars from the federal government, and operate mostly on a shoestring.  They deserve support and acknowledgement.  Several that I have supported or worked with are the Fraternal Order of Ex-Offenders (FOXO), www.foxo.org; Power Inside, www.powerinside.org; and Justice Maryland, www.justicemaryland.org.

ShareThis

Full post as published by BlackProf on January 31, 2008 (boomark / email).