President Bush
An anonymous commenter has added his or her 2 cents worth to my Ronald Reagan post from June 5. It says I should respect President Bush by calling him “President Bush” instead of “Mr. Bush”. He or she does not like my line “Mr. Bush, you are no Ronald Reagan”.
Ordinarily I would just let this go. However, I have thought about the issue of how to address our current president since the very beginning of this blog. I do have very strong feelings about the job Mr. Bush is doing—I feel he is ruining our country—so my inclination is to use caustic and derisive terms to describe our president. I resist the urge to use derogatory characterizations, most of the time (I’m not perfect). I agree with the commenter that the president himself should be respected even if his policies are abhorent.
If you read back through my postings, I almost always write “President Bush” as the first-used form of address of the president. This is done consiously. After that, I use “President Bush”, “Mr. Bush”, or “Bush” as seems to be appropriate.
Go ahead, check back. For example, I wrote, “…is the peace field open to President Bush?” as my first reference to him in The Peace Candidate? a few days ago. Afterward, I use “Bush” and “Mr. Bush” freely. This is exactly the style the New York Times and many other papers use.
For example, read today’s Times story on the “jabs” the president is taking at John Kerry: “In a jab at his Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry, Mr. Bush will call this phase of the campaign his ‘Heart and Soul of America’ tour”. There are over 4000 articles using “Mr. Bush” today, as returned by Google News.
So yes, I agree with the commenter that respecting the president leads to more civilized, effective arguments in postings, even if the policies the president promotes are despicable. Using “Mr. Bush” as a matter of style does not break the respect the office deserves.
August 7th, 2004 at 16:49
For Heaven’s sake, make no apologies! Many of us simply prefer to call the (s)elected one pResident Bu$h. Never forget that it wasn’t too long ago, in spite of three and half interminable years of highly anomolous domestic and international events, that Bu$h Jr. lost the popular vote by 500,000 votes. But of course, as we’ve all since come to learn, only five votes really count in America - equal f*****’ protection, indeed! And please, in future refrain from using the highly inaccurate term “re-elected”.
On an aside, it is clear that issues surrounding “Peak Oil” are of interest to you. Likely you are already familiar with Michael Ruppert (the one who came out with the groundbreaking Truth and Lies of 9/11 film, long before anyone else was onto the stink) and his website http://www.fromthewilderness.com. If you aren’t familiar, read up and weep.
http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/040729_mfe_reagan_1.html
August 7th, 2004 at 17:51
Respecting the president leads to more civilized, effective arguments in postings, even if the policies the president promotes are despicable. Yes, we should be mad at him. I do not always avoid the derisive jabs myself, like my “brownshirts” comments a few postings back. But it’s better to be somewhat measured in this sort of language than to just let it loose. For the most part people in this country hate politics and what sounds like partisan bickering. Partly that’s because most people have no background or knowledge to parse ideas in an animated argument. It just sounds like painful yelling.
Now, a bit of satire and mockery, that’s different–that’s what makes Franken, Moore, Stewart, and to some degree other night comics effective allies in the fight against Bush.
On the matter of Ruppert, yes, I’m quite familiar with the website. There is some valuable stuff there, like the Simmons interviews and transcriptions. But I just don’t buy his 911 theories, eg Cheney ordered it. He’s prone to extreme post hoc fallacies.