Two recent NY Times opinion pieces (by Bob Herbert and Maureen Dowd)
have castigated President Bush for “cavorting” around on his ranch in
Texas while American troops are shot at in Iraq.
You have to wonder whether reality ever comes knocking on George W.
Bush’s door. If it did, would the president with the unsettling
demeanor of a boy king even bother to answer? Mr. Bush is the commander
in chief who launched a savage war in Iraq and now spends his days
happily riding his bicycle in Texas.
…quoth
Herbert today, who’s merely taking a page out of Dowd’s playbook. The
day before, Dowd had mentioned cycling (or “riding bikes,” to phrase it
more juvenilely) five times in her article titled “Biking Towards
Nowhere,” in which she plays off the mainstream liberal notion of Bush
as the “Boy in the Bubble.”
All fine and good, but do
they have to do so by equating cycling with childishness, as if it
would be any more adult or manly for Bush to be tearing up the
landscape in a dune buggy or his favorite pickup? The media really is fixated on Bush and his bicycles.
