Tucked in the back of Sunday's Washington Post Magazine was the usual humor column by Gene Weingarten, devoted this week to allegedly feeling sorry for George W. Bush's low standing in public opinion, then relishing the idea of anti-Bush feeling in every single area of the newspaper, such as the horoscope:
Cancer (June 22-July 22)
Hold your head high. It is not your fault that you share an astrological sign with the president of the United States, who is, appropriately enough, a malignancy.
It's a satire, but there are days when it almost matches the bias of The Washington Post in weird sections like Food or Travel. Weingarten also borrowed from CBS's Charles Osgood in using Dr. Seuss as a model for conservative-bashing, as he imagined a Bush-bashing children's book:
...Then out of the box came Thing One and Thing Two,
And Sally and I did not know what to do!
They knocked Sally down, and she fell on her tush.
"I'm Cheney," said one. Said the other, "I'm Bush."
They attacked our four feet, with stompings and bites.
First they chewed on our lefts, then they trampled our rights!
They found Mother's money and flushed it away!
If we go to college, NOW how will we pay?
They smashed up our dishes, our toys and our bikes!
Our globe was on fire, and the golf bag Dad likes!
The mess they were making was torture to see,
"Torture is good," they told Sally and me...
That's mildly clever, but it feels more like a liberal partisan venting than humor. It ends with Hints from Heloise going postal on the President:
Dear Heloise: We have an ugly bush in front of our house. We had high hopes when we planted it there six years ago, but it has gone completely out of control and become an embarrassment. All the neighbors are talking about it and wondering why we haven't removed it. It's reflecting badly on my whole family. What's the best way to get rid of this unsightly, horrible thing? -- H.C.E., San Antonio, Tex.
Dear H.C.E.: This is a tricky one. Bushes can be really stubborn, and terribly resistant to removal. You need to buy several peach trees and plant them around the bush, creating an imprisonment or impoundment by peach trees. Technically, this is called im-peaching a bush. ARE YOU LISTENING, PEOPLE? DOES HELOISE HAVE TO DRAW A LITTLE CRAYON PICTURE FOR YOU?
