How We'll Miss the Golden Years of the Great Fly

LI was thinking that as the Great Fly leaves us something to remember him by – the destruction of the U.S. economy on a Katrina like scale – that it might be nice to go back and pick up comments about Bush by some of the great minds of the past eight years – you know, people like Fred Barnes, whose inspiring work, Rebel in Chief, will be read until the very heavens break, as it is to ass licking what the kamasutra was to gymnastic sex. Then, perhaps, Elizabeth Bumiller, whose analysis of Bush after the election of 2004 was spot on – the brilliance, the oratory that was so, so moving, the ideas. Perhaps scouring the WSJ in 2005, when Bush’s awesome notion that we should destroy social security was giving the country club crowd an estrus overload – in their frenzies there were understandable cases of them beating their caddies and servants, as the idea was that soon we would be reforming all the way back to Alexander II and re-institute serfdom.

But alas, as I looked back for suitable quotes, I got a little sick of the project. I suppose I have surfeiting on pure American shit over the last eight years. I couldn’t eat another mouthful.

But just when I thought sycophancy was dead – would never achieve the summits of 2003-2005, that golden time in which our leader’s words were balm that made each step lighter, and each death in Iraq more, well, fun – I read Pearlstein’s beautifully crafted D.C.-ish piece about the wonders of Hank Paulson. It has the sweep and depth of Barnes on our Rebel in Chief, and it is as contrarian as, say, Kinsley recommending that poor nations use one of their resources, ie the internal organs of their brats, and start selling them to first world nations to light a fire of free enterprise that will lift them out of poverty.

So I broke through my spell of nostalgia, realizing that yesterday's sycophants are still today's pundits! and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow - until they've broken the very back of the country that they know, dimly, exists somewhere outside the gated community on a hill. The place the maids disappear to every evening.