ABC News Didn’t Get the Memo: Bush is No Longer President, and Nobody Cares About Him Anymore.
Last night around 6:30, I dropped by a local bar to enjoy a quick beer. As I enjoyed my cold beverage, I became aware that Laura Bush was on the TV, participating in a very long puff piece with ABC News:
In fact, Mrs. Bush said she did not watch President Obama’s address to Congress on Tuesday night because she “totally forgot about it.”
“The next day I thought it was so ironic that for eight years I would be a nervous wreck before the State of the Union, and for days before, as George would be preparing his speech, worried about it and thinking about what was going to be in the speech. And this time it came and went and I didn’t even think about it.”
On and on it went, for nearly a half-hour, with questions like “what’s it like to be out of the bubble”, “do you pay attention to Obama”, “do you like to cook”, and “shopping”. It was truly bizarre, as if no one at ABC News has grasped the fact that not only did the Republicans lose the election, not only was Bush ineligible to run again, but the American public literally drove the Republicans from office from just about every state in the union.
Yet here was ABC News, performing the journalistic equivalent of cunnilingus on the former First Lady who, while pleasant enough, is associated with one of the most loathed administrations in recent memory. And not only were they interviewing her, they promised to repeat the interview this morning!
Serious question: WTF is going on over at ABC News? Did they not get the memo? Are they delusional? Are they just going to pretend the election never happened, and that, like the forever-young Lost Boys of Never-never Land that it will always be 2003, when Americans were still collectively insane and actually approved of the President? Or is it closer to Greenwald’s observation the other day:
The political establishment has never come to terms with, and the media establishment just refuses to acknowledge, how deeply unpopular and discredited the GOP is among most Americans in the wake of the eight-year Bush disaster. Political and media elites don’t want to acknowledge that because they lent their continuous support for eight years to Republican power, yet — even with Bush gone — it’s scarcely possible to imagine how a major political party could be held in lower esteem among voters.
There is something deeply sick about ABC’s fawning obsession with the Bushes: it is almost a fetish, an itch they can’t stop rubbing. Americans have awoken from their slumber, and no longer worship in the Bushes’ unique cult of personality.
It is too sad, disturbing, and entirely dissonant that ABC News still genuflects at that altar.
