Laura, Lost in the Bushes

Over the last eight years, like a lot of people, I have managed to hold onto essentially warm feelings toward Laura Bush. Having a facility for divorcing myself from reality, I have been able to shut off from my awareness that this is a woman who never (to our knowledge) acted on the many opportunities she must have had to take out Dick Cheney from close range.

I always enjoyed the fact that she is well-read. I took some smug satisfaction in recognizing that she obviously holds more progressive views than her husband and his band of puppeteers. And that he must be irked by that. Or better yet, that he doesn’t realize it, and there’s a special part deep inside Laura Bush that I will always understand—even touch—with more sensitivity than George ever could. Even now, I one day hope to have the chance to make George feel very small and insecure about that.

Although I am a consummately judgmental and intolerant former smoker, I’ve even taken pleasure in knowing that Laura Bush is a secret smoker. Because that would bother the other intolerant and judgmental people who probably voted for George because they mistakenly thought that Laura was a kindred intolerant spirit. And really, you can hardly blame her for having the occasional stress smoke. Look at the family she married into. Can you imagine dragging yourself through a holiday with these people? She deserves a good old fashioned heroin habit.

Laura Bush has been fully insulated from my wrath against the Bushes. I can’t pretend I don’t hold some grudges with the pointlessly infinite grip of a Bond villain. I’m still mad at Barbara Bush for calling Geraldine Ferraro a bitch back in 1984. Did she ever apologize for that? Didn’t think so.

But Laura has remained unsullied in my view. She has been that single intact and well-constructed tower rising in hopeful contrast from the ruins of a dessicated and crumbling medieval castle of a feudal overlord who had lived too long as a parasite upon the toil of the serfs.

Now that edifice is crumbling, and it’s all because of what I saw on TV this week: Really ugly china. Not at all the tasteful understatement I have grown to expect from Laura. No, this crap is gold leaf. With gold utensils. Yes. Gold utensils.

Really, Laura? Gold leaf? Isn’t that just a little too on the nose?

It’s not just a whisper of gold leaf, mind you. A thin stripe of gold leaf around the edges might have squeaked into tastefulness. But this is quite a lot of gold leaf. A little more gaudy and it would be suitable for a turn of the century whore-house. Ever so slightly more gaudy than that, and it would be right about what an eight year old might design as part of their If I Were King of the World fantasy. More gaudy still, and then we would have descended into the screaming-infant hell of Donald Trump’s taste.

The new White House china was on the news because people were upset that Laura spent $492,000 on china while the rest of us are saving up for that package of organic chicken breasts we’ve had our eye on. Laura explained fairly well that this deal was made two years ago when the economy was better, and seemed to put the subject to bed. Not so for me. I’m still wondering what kind of ecstasy laced bubble you have to be living in to feel like $492,000 on plates is ever a good buy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a zillion place settings with a zillion individual pieces per setting and blah, blah, blah it’s important to demonstrate gravitas for visiting heads of state. But that brings us back to the gold leaf problem. Shiny swaths of gold is not gravitas. It’s the film set of Hello Dolly. And it’s all very disconcerting because this is not the Laura Bush I know and whom I have till now felt confident that I could steal away from George if I wanted to. Where, amidst all this Liberace-wear china, is our secretly progressive, intellectual, Laura—jonesing for a Marlboro Red and rolling her eyes at Karl Rove? Has she been too long trapped in a maze of Bushes? Has she gone from dissident to being Barbara’s dutiful daughter-in-law? Will she inherent the pearls of disdain for us simple folk?

Perhaps it’s good that Laura is leaving when she is. This selection of expensive and overwrought crap for the White House is too much a signal that something has changed. She’s lost her way. She’s out of touch. And as Barbara reminded us in 1984, out of touch can make you very unkind, indeed. Today it’s kitschy dishes. Tomorrow Laura may wish to make us all her bitch.