The Bush Girls

A new book is due out on Laura Bush, described as "the perfect wife", in which much is made of her poor twin daughters.

First, I find it amazing that Laura Bush is so often seen as a woman to be admired. Oh, she loves talking all the time about being a teacher and librarian, but this woman has worked just a few years in her entire life. I keep hearing how she left work to raise her girls... but Mrs. Bush didn't have children for 5 years after she left the work force.

Her grasp of the language - while nowhere near as bad as her husband's - can leave a person wondering what the standards were 30-40 years ago for becoming a teacher and librarian in Texas. She does not seem particularly well-read, she tries her best to reflect the fact that she tries not to think about anything unpleasant, and according to this book, she does nothing but make excuses for those girls of hers.

While many 22-year-olds are over in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting this war, or working very hard in college to maintain their scholarships so endangered under this president's administration, or working hard to support their families, this privileged pair jet everywhere, break all the rules, get their Secret Service bodyguards to bail boyfriends out of jail and buy them concert tickets, and barely seem to have time for college classes. But you get the impression education is not really a big issue in the George W. Bush family anyway.

If the perfect wife is a "yes woman" who loves shopping and spending her wealthy hubby's money with no concern where that money came from, then yes, Laura is a perfect wife. If "perfect American girls" are defined as those with no sense of responsibility or justice, who regularly party with the same marijuana other peoples' children would be in jail for possessing, who go to good schools even with their very poor grades, who love to have their pictures taken with "those leftist" Hollywood stars and at fashion shows while other people their age are fighting and dying for their father's war, and whose only accomplishment in life is to be born into the right family, then Jenna and Barb are the perfect presidential daughters.

And I thought my family was dysfunctional. Sheesh.