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Compiling this year’s pictures, This Blog has grown melancholy over the forthcoming loss of that eternal font of teh goofy, George Bush’s face, that chimp-like countenance which has the unique ability to make you want to both laugh at it and punch it very hard indeed, simultaneously.
What will a Barack Obama presidency bring? A long, long visual drought. An increasingly frustrating series of dignified poses. Sigh. Soon desperation will drive me to learn how to photoshop propeller beanies
and Queen Elizabeth’s hats
onto his head,
and he’ll still look ten times more dignified than Bush at his most dignitudinous. Sigh.
Here’s our look back:
My most popular photo of the year (400 hits from the Netherlands alone), Mara Carfagna, Italy’s “Equal Opportunities Minster” and now government spokesperson:
Our first glimpse of Joe the Plumber:
(Updated:
John McCain informed us that the fundamentals of our economy were strong, and while he may not have been entirely correct about that, one fundamental leading economic indicator remained absolutely steady, no matter what: everything we needed to know about the true state of the economy we could always tell by the expression on Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s face:
Finally, presenting the Picture of the Year for 2008:
Come back, Maverick, all is forgiven.
Cardinal Jorge Medina of Chile interrupted a mass in order to castigate Madonna (the singer not the mother of that Jesus guy), currently doing a concert tour in Chile, for causing “impure thoughts” with her “incredibly shameful behaviour.” He said that such thoughts, but presumably not massacring dissidents in a soccer stadium – did I mention the mass was in honor of the late dictator Augusto Pinochet? – are “a dirty stain on our heart.” Medina also accused Chileans seeking justice against government officials who tortured and killed during the Pinochet years of being motivated by revenge.
The Catholic Church also pressured Italian tv to run “Brokeback Mountain” without any gay scenes.
Today Bush met Dr. Halima Bashir, a civil rights activist from Darfur and author of “Tears in the Desert.” He said, “The urgency of the situation is never more apparent than when I had the honor of visiting with this brave soul.” Whatever makes it real for you. She hid her face from photographers, for obvious reasons.
Because she was afraid of getting killed in Sudan. Why, what did you think?
IN OTHER WORDS: “We support the mediation process by the A.U.-U.N. mediator. In other words, we recognize in order for there to be peace in Darfur that parties must come to the table in good faith and solve the problems.”
Bush was interviewed for Nightline tonight (link, other link).
IN OTHER WORDS: Asked whether a deal for a bailout of the car companies is close: “It’s hard to tell because there are some pretty strict standards. One is that anything that’s done would as best as possible guarantee the taxpayers get their money back. In other words, there needs to be viability.”
WHAT WE JUST DON’T WANT: “These are important companies, but on the other hand, we just don’t want to put good money after bad.”
The conversation naturally segued from there to the question of whether the Bible is literally true. “Probably not ... No, I’m not a literalist, but I think you can learn a lot from it, but I do think that the New Testament, for example is ... has got ... You know, the important lesson is ‘God sent a son.’”
Bush says he... I was about to say he said he believes in evolution, but thinking about it, what he said was “I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty, and I don’t think it’s incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution,” which is actually only saying that evolution may be true, not that it is.
CAN’T COUNT TO TWELVE: “All I can just tell you is that I got back into religion and I quit drinking shortly thereafter and I asked for help -- I was a one-step program guy.”
Says without his faith, “I’m pretty confident I would have been a pretty selfish person.” Yeah, imagine what that would be like.
Did God choose you to be president? “I just, I can’t go there.” Wink wink.
WHAT THERE’S A SENSE OF IN THE OVAL OFFICE: “There is a sense of calm in the Oval Office, where there are obviously a lot of dramatic moments and a lot of, you know, pressure, but there is calm in the Oval Office.”
WHAT THE VOICES IN GEORGE’S HEAD ARE SAYING TO HIM NOW: “People say, ‘But how do you know that it’s because of prayer?’ And I guess the answer is because of faith is how I know -- I can’t prove it for you.”
HE SHOULD REALLY TEACH SUNDAY SCHOOL AFTER HE LEAVES OFFICE: “For me, it’s not a crutch, for me it’s the realization of a power of a universal God and recognition that the God came manifested in human and then died for sins.”
