Table of Contents
Title Page
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Introduction
Economics Lesson
Trouble in the Middle East
God Bless
Saving Time
Let’s Not Forget the Lobbyists
Which God Is Your God?
Yesterday’s Enemy
Dinner at the Darbys’
Book Flogging
Shadow Government
Safe Deposit for Sale
The Young Audience
It’s Cherry Blossom Time
Malice on Purpose
Red Alert
The FBI Changes Its Ways
Declaration
Things in My Attic
Another Icon
Ashes to Ashes
I Spy-You Spy
Between Iraq and a Hard Place
Will the Real Saddam Stand Up?
I Hate Saddam
To Lose One’s Center
Games Children Play
Come Fly With Me
Foreign Affairs for Dummies
The Last Pill
Losing Your Identity
Whose Reality Is It?
The Fight for Duct Tape
Yelling at the TV
The Tip of the Iceberg
The War Over Abstinence
Bumper Stickers
Weapons of Mass Destruction
I’ll Always Have Paris
Americo-Shaft Airlines
Freedom of Speech
The Political War
Spam the Greatest Generation
James Bond and WMD
The Bookies
The Iraqi Stock Market
Bless the World
I Won’t Be Home for Christmas
Who Remembers Watergate?
Three-Letter Word
Poor Rupert Murdoch
Senior Citizens Vote Too
The Ten Commandments
Power Anonymous
A Great American
The Big Leak
Unnecessary Roughness
But Seriously Speaking
Wal-Mart
Talk Show
A Sexual Revolution
Gotcha Saddam
Holiday Greetings
Saving Britney’s Marriage
The Opera Isn’t Over
Suppose They Were Wrong
War of the Steroids
Four Letter Words and More
Duck Hunting with Scalia
Just Good Friends—Bah
Who Killed Jesus?
The Good Americans
Canada, My Canada
The Blues Brothers
Soldiers of Fortune
Torture 101
The Rich are Different
Michael, Say It Isn’t So
The Trial
“Oh Darn”
How Many Wars?
Commissions for Boo-Boos
Image Control
Couch Potatoes
Meat Loaf
Husseinku
Compassionate Conservatism
Left Behind
Trial Lawyers—Who Needs Them?
Do It Our Way
The Dan Rather Factor
Our Long Nightmare Is Over Once Again
Congressional No Flu Zone
Slam Dunk
Crate and Baghdad
In God We Trust
A Vivid Inauguration
First Junk Call
Making Extra Money
Social Security Blues
Flip-Flop Diplomacy
Harvard, Dear Harvard
Well Hello, Martha
Smoking Guns
A Constitutional Solution
Oil Tasting For Snobs
The News
The Quiet Ambassador
Happy Mountain
Where Were You?
Hate in America
Bless This House
You Can’t Sue Me
Canceling Out O’Reilly
Darwin Go Home
Katrina
Once Upon a Time in New Orleans
I’ll Drink to FEMA
A Leak in the Basement
Torture Airlines
Let’s Pretend
The Truth About Global Warming
The Nine Trillion Dollar Heist
Good News
A Call from Big Brother
About the Author
Also by Art Buchwald
Copyright Page
EVERY WRITER WHO CAN’T SPELL or is never grammatically correct needs an editor. Cathy Crary has fit this role since 1982. I therefore dedicate this book to her. She laughs at everything, but still wields a red pencil in her left hand.
Preface to the Paperback Edition
WHEN BEATING AROUND THE BUSH was published in hardcover I had two legs and great kidneys. Now I have one leg and wounded kidneys. The paperback version of Beating Around the Bush had nothing to do with these losses.
Bush is still captain of the Titanic. There are icebergs all over Washington. Some of the White House stars have left the ship. Some of them have become lobbyists, some have escaped indictment, and others have been writing books.
Despite all this, nothing has changed since the hardcover, except that several columns have been added and the beating has not stopped.
The main difference is that the softcover is much cheaper.
The good thing is, although I went to a hospice, I haven’t died. It has made my publisher very happy.
Preface to the First Edition
BEFORE I BEGIN, I would like to say that I am prepared to go to jail rather than reveal to a grand jury the names of my sources for this book. The reason is I had no sources—I made everything up.
The characters I mention, such as President George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Bill O’Reilly, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Martha Stewart, Michael Jackson, Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair, Prince Charles, and the Boston Red Sox, are all fictitious and do not resemble anyone living, dead, or in between.
It is hard to believe, but for all of us these have been the best of times and the worst of times—depending on if you are in the top two percent of wealthiest Americans, have health insurance, a decent pension plan, and a credit card that doesn’t bounce on you.
These past few years have been a gold mine of material for a columnist. For one reason, our leaders keep screwing up and refuse to admit it. As you will read, there are no bad guys in Washington, there are only good guys doing bad things.
The uppermost subject on our minds has been single-sex marriage. No civilized society can have people of the same gender getting into bed together. Then we worried about the environment. Everyone agrees global warming should be stopped, and if it isn’t, Anchorage will soon look like Miami.
I have also dealt with creationsim versus Darwinism. Did God create the earth in six days, or did we originate from monkeys? I discuss this because a book that mentions God sells more copies to human beings than one that appeals to apes.
I also deal with the Iraq war. It is not my position that it was a good war or a bad war, a just war or an unjust war, a smart war or the dumbest war we have ever gotten into. My position is that it is the only war we’ve got, so we have to support it.
Do you want to know how I feel about torture? Personally, I am against it, but if we can get information out of someone by breaking his knuckles, attaching electrodes to his testicles, or dragging him around with a dog leash, I say go for it—unless it violates the Geneva Convention. Then you do it in the kitchen where no one can see you.
Does this book appeal to conservatives or liberals? It appeals to both. There is something in it for anyone who watches Fox News, agrees with Bill O’Reilly and thinks Rush Limbaugh is a really neat guy. The reason I say this is because conservatives buy books. Ann Coulter is the right wing’s answer to Al Franken’s wife. All the liberals have are Michael Moore and Hillary Clinton—and we all know about them. But that doesn’t mean I don’t stick up for the Left. They buy books too (using food stamps).
There is something for everyone on the political spectrum. You don’t have to be a “born again” anything. You don’t even have to be in favor of the Ten Commandments on state capitol buildings.
Some people may try to stop this book from being published because it makes fun of our president and all our revered institutions, including McDonald’s golden arches. But this is a free country, and you can write anything you want to. Getting on the best-seller list is another story.
Introduction
BY GARRY TRUDEAU
I’VE ALWAYS BEEN PARTIAL to introductions—particularly considering the alternative. If you need no introduction whatsoever, you’re probably paying some terrible price. Think Kato Kaelin. Martha Stewart. Paris Hilton. You get the idea.
There are, of course, happy exceptions: For many years, Art Buchwald needed no introduction. If he paid a price, I am unaware of it. I’m only aware of people paying him. In fact, he still needs no introduction to two generations of keenly devoted readers. (You folks can proceed directly to Chapter One.) It’s the newest generation that’s got him worried, and it should, because the young don’t seem to read newspapers, which is where both of us ply our trade. That Mr. Buchwald’s publisher has turned to me to bridge this gap is touching, because like the author, I’ve been handing out the same publicity photo for twenty years, effectively freezing the aging process, at least in the public imagination.
In any event, I’m happy to play along, because like most people in the satire biz, I am in Buchwald’s debt, with no hope of ever retiring it. His influence has been so wide and pervasive that all of us who make our livings with peashooters and slingshots and mud pies regard him with awe and, of course, suspicion. No one human, we reason, no matter how ambitious, could possibly strike so many blows in so many deserving quarters on such a consistent basis. There must be a team—Team Buchwald—assembling his columns. The maestro probably writes the lead and names his “source” (usually someone like “my pal Smeadley at Foggy Bottom”), but after that it’s outsourced to Tegucigalpa, where humble but wily campesinos, raised on badly-dubbed episodes of The Simpsons, cobble together the main text in comedy sweatshops so poorly lit that they must work in braille. The raw column is then translated back into standard English and returned to the head office on Connecticut Avenue where it is burnished by senior stylists for Buchwald’s final approval.
It’s just a theory. But in its absence, there is simply no explanation for Buchwald’s half century of carrying on so magnificently without pause. Woody Allen is right that 80 percent of success is showing up—and Art has shown up longer (about 92 percent longer), and with greater panache and good cheer (110 percent more), than anyone currently practicing the black arts.
If this is all news to you, great. Consider yourself introduced. Take it away, Art.
Economics Lesson
“ALL RIGHT CLASS, today we’re going to discuss the economic factors that make a society work. To make it easier, the children whose parents have jobs will sit on this side of the room. Those whose mothers and fathers don’t have jobs, sit on that side.
“Now, in order to have a successful economy you have to have money. Most people earn their money by having a job. You get paid by the company for services rendered, such as working for a telephone company, or being a computer programmer. Now, as soon as Alfred Sidewinder is paid, he gives the money to someone else, like a department store or the grocer, usually with a credit card.
“The department store or the grocer then takes Alfred’s money and puts it in the bank to pay off their own debts. The bank, in turn, lends the money to Howard Simpan, who wants to buy a house, and to Frederick Lipscomb, who wants to open a pizza parlor. In a good economy, everybody is handing each other money, and everyone is happy. Some invest money in stocks, and these companies then spread the wealth because everyone believes the market will always go up.
“That’s the good side. The bad side is, if Alfred Sidewinder, at the beginning of the merry-go-round, doesn’t spend any money. Then we have a recession.”
One of the children on the side of the unemployed parents says, “My father doesn’t have any money. He lost his job making office file cabinets.” Another one yells, “My father lost his job as an airline pilot.” A third one chimes in, “My father has no work because his greeting card company printed all their cards in Indonesia.”
A child on the side of the room whose parents are still working says, “My father won’t let my mother spend any money. He says you never know when you will no longer have a job.”
“If the economy gets better will the people get their jobs back?” a child asks.
“That’s an interesting question. The only way to get out of a recession is to have the people working again. Many companies are laying off workers because they say they aren’t making any money. They have no intention of hiring them back because they realized how much they would save if they had half their employees.”
“What’s the answer?”
“President Bush thinks a tax cut for large companies should do the job.”
“What about Christmas?” someone asks.
“That’s a good point. It could be a good year or a bad year, depending on Sidewinder. The ball is in his court now. It would be nice if the children on the unemployed side of the room could soon be sitting on the other side. But it will happen only after the economy hits bottom. Are there any questions?”
Trouble in the Middle East
AS IF WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH trouble in the Middle East, the Saudi Arabians are now suing the American tobacco companies to compensate for twenty-five years of their government treating smoking-related illnesses. (No joke.)
Ahmed al-Tuwaijri, lawyer for the King Faisal Hospital, called the suit part of a “holy war” against the tobacco interests, as if the U.S. needed another “holy war” at this time. He called tobacco “The biggest corruption on earth.”
I don’t think Mr. Al-Tuwaijri has been reading the papers lately.
Saudi Arabia is the fourth largest importer of American tobacco in the world, and since treatment in Saudi hospitals is free, the government is making the tobacco companies eat sand.
So now the U.S. has a serious problem on its hands. Does the United States take the side of the American tobacco industry because it brings in so many dollars, or do they prepare for a “Tobacco Jihad?”
It’s a tough choice because the Saudi Arabians have been known to walk a mile for a Camel. Since they can’t drink, the only thing they can do is puff away to their hearts’ content.
No one knows what Saudi Arabians would do if you took away their butts. While the hospital is asking for three billion dollars to pay for people who have smoking illnesses, the tobacco companies say it’s not their fault. They are just making people happy.
The anti-smoking forces in the U.S. who are allied with those in Saudi Arabia have suggested that the entire country become a smoke-free zone, and anyone who lights up should be publicly flogged.
The big fear is that other Middle Eastern countries will follow suit. Since that area is one of the biggest markets, the tobacco companies must speak softly but carry a big stick. To make sure the playing field is not level, the suit is being pursued in the Grand Islamic court in Riyadh. Phillip Morris is not sure they can find twelve just men.
An American tobacco company representative, who shall remain nameless, said, “If they won’t buy our cigarettes we won’t buy their oil.”
“That should scare them,” I said.
&nb
sp; “We have to be able to export our product overseas because there is so much pressure here from American anti-smoking zealots.”
An interesting statistic is that 40 percent of all Saudi men smoke and 10 percent of all Saudi women—though this last figure would be higher if we knew who was smoking under their burkas.
God Bless
THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE to thank this Christmas. I don’t know where to begin. First, I would like to thank the People’s Sweat Shop of Shanghai for the beautiful American flag glove and scarf set, which makes me feel very patriotic.
To the Taiwan Watch Factory, who made it possible for me to have a knock-off of a Rolex, I send my appreciation. No one could tell the difference and it only cost $19.50. (The one with diamonds cost $29.95.)
And I don’t want to forget the luggage with the Stars and Stripes on it, made in Child Labor Factory Number 4 in the Philippines. It looks exactly like a real Louis Vuitton, and even has a lifetime guarantee.
My gratitude to the government inspectors in Sri Lanka. The tennis shoes with an American flag stenciled on them were a size seven and I’m an eleven. I am sending them back. I thank you for letting me exchange them.
I would also like to thank the woman in Nepal for the cashmere sweaters on which she knitted “God Bless America.” If you bought one you got one free, so my wife now has two.
And, lest we forget it, I’ll always be grateful for the Bavarian cuckoo clock from Korea that plays “My Country ’Tis of Thee” on the hour. Please wish all the prisoners who worked on it in Seoul Prison Number 1348 my best regards.
There are so many people I’d like to thank for making my holiday such a great one.
The toy U.S. Marines from Bombay, India, were a hit with my grandson, and he hasn’t stopped playing with them.
And the female naval flying officer doll was a smash with my granddaughter. Another big hit was a dancing Santa Claus holding an American flag in his hand made by the Hutus in Madagascar. Everyone loves it.
Unfortunately, the Mother Soon Wong fruitcake from Hong Kong arrived smashed, but we’re not blaming Mother Soon Wong. She didn’t know it was being sent through the U.S. Postal Service.
Beating Around the Bush Page 1
