“Pants on Fire”

What’s that you call Bush? C’mon. What’s your favorite epithet for the man? I’ll give you a hint. “Liar.”

You say he lied to take us to war. Did he? Didn’t the poor guy just get fooled? You know he’s not too bright – he can’t even talk right, right? You know he’s not really a liar, but that’s the word that springs to mind. It’s the word that’s dying to get out. You want to shout it from the rooftops. LIAR! And you do. But do you know why?

Whatcha say y’ah y’self. Remember that taunt? Well, maybe it’s not your fault. It’s not exactly you who is the liar. It’s someone close to your heart. Someone you must defend. Someone who when he says he’s not lying, you have to go along with.

Charming Billy was a liar. Is it possible to be charming without lying? Try it. You’ll be lying with your first, “Fine, thank you,” or “You look great.”

Bill Clinton lied under oath. I don’t blame him; he lied like a man. A man is supposed to lie about sex. Protect his beloved. Or his best friend’s wife. Or his intern. He’s supposed to lie through his teeth, say, “I never…we never…” and the world is supposed to applaud and admire.

You caught Bush with his pants down. But he wasn’t lying, he was taking care of business. You knew that. George is a simple guy, without personal ambition; he wants people to like him. He agreed to serve his country when called upon to do so by his Dad, Rummy and Friendly-Fire Dick..

So ever since the impeachment, that word’s been on your mind. Zooming around and around in your head, like a discus, and you want to let it fly. And guess who’s there? Dubya. They called your boy a liar; you’ll call theirs a liar. Even if you don’t think he’s bright enough to tell tales.

He’s not a good target for the L word – a man who is honest out of necessity. He can only think one thought at a time.

“Liar Liar Pants on Fire.” Could that be more apt? For Clinton, not Bush. Charming Billy’s pants are always on fire. And to cover his out-of-pants experiences, decency demands a lot of lying.

But back to Bush. You’ve been Bush-whacked. What would you rather : The administration has a great success, for instance, solves the energy problem, or they accomplish nothing, and leave office in disgrace? You wouldn’t think about it. You’d go for the disgrace. Boo Boooooosh!

And why? You know why. Maybe you’ve pushed it to the back of your mind (for a few seconds). What is Bush’s real crime? He got elected. Or selected, depending upon how you look at it.

He didn’t even get a majority of the popular vote. And that’s with a lot of Democrats staying home. This is maddening, and the Dems got mad. Damn the Supreme Court. Damn the stupid Florida voters. Damn the hanging chads. And damn the Electoral College.

Whoa! That last one doesn’t belong. Discussions of the rules precede the event. They don’t follow it. In sports, only a poor loser would complain that the rules favored his opponent. .

The rules ground on. It got complicated. It was slow. It was ugly. It was “torture”. It went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth daily and sometimes hourly, until it winnowed down to “George Bush is President.”

And you know what you said? You said, “No he’s not.”

You won’t like hearing this, because you want him to be the Divider, but he did everything he could to appease you. He refused to veto any bills. He accepted the fact that more than half the people wanted the other guy. But you didn’t get over it. You refused to help. You stood in his way.

Think back now. Remember. Would you ever have believed, in mid-September 2001 that we would not be attacked for seven years?

You can call him incompetent, you can criticize his decisions, you can bemoan the fate of the nation, you can even want change. But end the abuse of language. Don’t call him a liar because when you do, you’re the one who needs the fire extinguisher.