A FIGURE OF SUCH MORAL VACANCY AS TO MAKE US MOURN FOR OURSELVES

[powergirl]

An excellent column originally published in 2004. This sums up our president's attitude toward Cindy Sheehan and others who are suffering unimaginable loss. The link is here: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3309407

I have cut and pasted the more salient portions of the column.

OUR UNFEELING PRESIDENT
Bush cannot grieve because he doesn't know what death is
By E.L. DOCTOROW


Editor's note: The article below was written by novelist E.L. Doctorow for The East Hampton Star, and was originally published on Sept 9, 2004. Since that time the number of American war dead in Iraq has risen to more than 1,800.

(snip)

How then can
A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children. He is the president who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills — it is amazing for how many people in this country this president does not feel.

But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest 1 percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the quality of air in coal mines to save the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a-half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class.


But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this.
The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble.



He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.










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[Bellamia]

1. Great Article

Thanks for re-posting it; it is a strange comfort to know "he doesn't care because he can't"; Perhaps he should be pitied.

[lady lib]

2. He can't mourn because he's a sociopath...

http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/05/08/ana050285.html

[merci_me]

3. I've vote this to the Greatest list

I read this essay, by one of my favorite authors, last year and again this Sunday in the Houston Chronicle.

It's terrific and somethiing we should all read, copy and re-read! Thank you for posting it.

Mary

[kath]

4. Whoa!!!! - It was in the Houston Chronicle on Sun?!?!?!! Wowza!!

[merci_me]

9. Don't be so surprised

In the last few years, the Houston Chronicle has decided to be an educated news source. As the MSM drifts farther and farther right, the Houston Chronicle has been leaning, ever so slightly, into the center and often a tick to the left. You should catch them online. They are on Tom Delay and his "friends" almost daily.

I came to Houston 21 years ago, to find the mayor was a female Democrat. Since that time, we have always had a Democratic mayor, to the point that we've had 3-way races, where ALL the candidates were Democrats. The woman who was mayor when we came was followed by a White male Democrat, a Black male Democrat and today our mayor is the former State Chair of the Democratic party, a former Undersecretary of Energy under Clinton and an old college roommate of RFK,Jr. Just two months ago they shared the stage here, to discuss the environment and the following week, our mayor lead the Gay Pride Parade.

It's things like this, that we know and are proud of, that makes it such a pain in the ass to come here and see how DUer's paint all of Texas with the idiot * brush.

[hvn_nbr_2]

10. Thanks for busting a stereotype

I had no idea about Houston. I thought Austin was the only place in Texas like that.

[merci_me]

11. Shhhhhhhhh, don't tell anyone

that a Houstonian would have anything good to say about Dallas, but last November, Dallas elected a Democrat-Hispanic-Lesbian as Sheriff.

See the cities are just fine. It's the damn suburbs, where the native wingnuts and the out-of-state wingnuts all gather to block vote Repuke. At least that keeps our cities free of the two-legged vermin.

Mary

[powergirl]

12. Houstonian here

I grew up in Houston, went to school there, graduated from high school there. And now I live in Freeperville (Plano, Texas). Houston is definitely more diverse. I miss everything except the weather!

[kentuck]

5. Excellent quote !

Recommend

[lady lib]

6. Third recommend

Amazing that the Houston Chronicle published this.

[ooglymoogly]

7. i'll make that a fiver...kick n nom

[fooj]

8. Here's the audio version...

courtesy of evilqueen:

And the mp3 file is here:
http://evilqueen.demesnes.net/mp3/e_l_doctorow.mp3

Very powerful!

Peace.