This F*cking Guy: George W. Bush

Erin Ryan (0:00)

Welcome to another episode of This Fucking Guy, the series that spotlights one fucking guy making America worse and explains why they suck. I'm Erin Ryan, host of Crooked Media's Hysteria podcast.

Jane Coaston (0:10)

And I'm Jane Coaston, host of Crooked Media's What A Day.

Erin Ryan (0:13)

The Crooked Media collabs will continue until morale improves.

Jane Coaston (0:16)

And today is my birthday, and I'm so excited that I get a very special gift. Erin, can you tell me what my amazing present is?

Erin Ryan (0:26)

Well, you've known what the present is for quite some time, but you can pretend to be surprised. Jane, I'm so excited to have you on this episode to get into the life and crimes of George W. Bush.

Jane Coaston (0:36)

He's the war criminal you'd like to have a beer with or buy a painting from.

Erin Ryan (0:40)

Now, Jane, both of us are elder millennials, so we remember the star-spangled mania of the post-911 era like a post-concussion hallucination. A truly insane time when Toby Keith was considered cool. We wore whisker wash, low-rise glitter jeans and going-out tops to parties.

And George W. Bush was a popular and beloved statesman.

Jane Coaston (1:00)

There were even books written about how great he was and how he'd never be forgotten and how Republicans would need to learn from him. And those books have since been forgotten. I wonder why.

Erin Ryan (1:10)

In the years since Dubya departed the White House in a blaze of failure, the litany of monstrosities he ordered or oversaw have faded from memory. At least enough that he's now seen in popular culture as a good-natured peepaw, sneaking mints to Michelle Obama during funerals. But none of what we're seeing now in the Trump era would have been possible without George W. Bush.

Jane Coaston (1:29)

He kicked open the big stupid door. But the phrase regarding the antics of Trump, they're saying the quiet part out loud implies that there was a quiet part. George W. Bush was the quiet part.

Erin Ryan (1:41)

George W. Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut on July 6th, 1946, which makes him two weeks younger than current President Donald Trump, which really that's something to chew on.

Jane Coaston (1:51)

Weird. Dubya was born into a family of immense privilege. He was the oldest son of Barbara Pierce Bush, whose father was descended from the family of President Franklin Pierce, who died of alcoholism, and George HW. Bush, who was himself the son of Prescott Bush, a Wall Street big shot who eventually represented Connecticut in the US. Senate.

Dubya's great-grandfather was a railroad tycoon.

Erin Ryan (2:12)

A whole family of Mr. Monopolies. Soon after Dubya was born, Bush Sr. moved his family from Connecticut to Texas, where he was outside of his patriarch's shadow, but not so far away he couldn't take advantage of his family's wealth and influence. In the early 1950s, his uncle George Herbert Walker Jr., Bush Sr.'s uncle Herbie, on his mom's side, wrote George Sr. a check to start his own oil extraction company. Walker would later go on to be one of the original owners of the New York Mets.

Jane Coaston (2:38)

It's like a nepo baby lasagna.

Erin Ryan (2:41)

One of the main privileges of the ultra-rich is they never need to advance beyond childhood. There's always somebody waiting to pay for you, to absorb your failures, to bankroll whatever super sweet 16 fantasy you want to live out until you die of old age. If you're rich enough, male enough, and white enough, you're a boy until your dad dies. You can be an 80-year-old boy. Off his legacy status, W went to Andover, sometimes known as Phillips Academy, a fancy boarding school in Connecticut like his daddy. According to a 1999 Texas Monthly profile, for his first English assignment, Bush was told to recount an emotional experience. Writing about something that made him cry, he looked up the word tears, T-E-A-R-S, in a thesaurus, hoping to find an impressive synonym. He wrote, Lacerates ran down my cheeks. Oh, he looked up the wrong homonym, tears. Lacerates ran down my cheeks. The professor gave him a zero, calling his paper disgraceful, end quote.

Jane Coaston (3:33)

That explains how we wound up in the Iraq War.

Anyway, W failed to make the honor roll at Andover, which unsurprising, and his SAT score put him firmly in average territory, which is actually kind of impressive, given the Lacerates story. But he did appoint himself High Commissioner of Stickball, which he took very, very seriously, according to Texas Monthly. He also designed Stickball team membership cards, bearing what appeared to be a school seal, and distributed them as fake IDs students used to get into Boston bars.