BuzzFlash Reviews

January 2005

DVD: Bushisms: The Accidental Wit and Wisdom of Our 43rd President

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"Most of you probably didn't know that I have a
new book out. Some guy put together a collection of my wit and wisdom -- or, as he calls it, my accidental wit and wisdom. [Laughter] But I'm kind of proud that my words are already in book form."
-- President George W. Bush, discussing and reading from Bushisms

To paraphrase George W. Bush, this DVD ought to put Bush on your family, or food on your family, or your family on Bush -- or whatever. Who knows what he's talking about half the time.

When we saw this low-budget rendering of Jacob Weissberg's collection of Bushisms before the election, we found the whole thought of the liar-in-chief too horrifying to laugh. When we viewed it a second time, after the first of the year, we couldn't stop laughing.

Maybe if you can distance yourself enough to realize that we are participating in a grand farce, a Hollywood "B" movie in which the dimwit of the town is repackaged into "GI Joe," while never having been in combat, you can begin to enjoy this DVD version of Bush's dysfunctional use of the English language. It has become somewhat chic to avoid being critical of Bush's mangling of the English language because that somehow implies you are being elitist.

But isn't it really a basic expectation that the leader of the free world can speak English in a way that inspires, instead of making you think that he couldn't graduate from one of those elementary schools put on parole by the Bush crock-of-B.S. "No Child Left Behind" political scam?

This is the guy who read a pet goat book for several minutes after 9/11 because he had to wait for his handlers to tell him what to say!

When we saw and heard his most famous Bushisms assembled on this DVD, knowing that he was about to be recrowned, we had to just laugh. There was no alternative. And the DVD, due to its limited budget, has just the right campiness, including a trashy send-up of the old "Laugh-In."

What we have here is the lame-brained WASP scion packaged as the down-home stupid cousin. Rove uses that to make it seem like anti-Bush Americans are against people who don't speak the King's English, when the guy he is protecting thinks he IS the King.

As far as we're concerned, Elvis is still the King, not George -- and Elvis had a way with words, you know, unlike you know who.

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