Monkey, or organ grinder?

It's funny where your meanderings across the information highways and byways take you. From reading the consistently excellent A Free Man in Preston Blog archives, via a circuitous route I found myself looking at some video content online that left me confused and curious. And this time it wasn't deutsche bath boys.

the smoking gun is the modern-day equivalent of the salacious fifties scandal sheets that delighted in the public airing of dirty laundry. This page finds it gleefully enjoying damning footage of Dubya at a 1992 wedding razzing on friends for not smoking or drinking, apparently being in a state of refreshment himself.

I'm so used to seeing George as a simple-minded puritan zealot fumbling for his words that it came as a shock to see the mask slipped, to reveal a relaxed easy performer with a sense of humour, hell I found myself warming to him.

It got me to wondering, how much of the "Aw shucks, simple guy like you folk" persona is a routine that plays well in the heartland - hiding a slightly more sophisticated than you think political operator. Someone who knows that big chunks of the electorate are mistrustful of smart-alec types like Nader and Gore.

Isn't it stretching credulity a bit to insist that a complete moron made it to the top job, not once but twice? And if you insist that he's an imbecile, well what does that make us? Wasn't it the late, great, Obi Wan Kenobi who asked "who is more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?".

Anyhoo these days, just like Osama, Dubya is sworn off the drink, and neither of them party hard any more. In the interests of a more friendly debate I think world leaders should gather together for tequila shots, and perhaps chop out a chubby line of racket.

Not that I endorse cocaine use you understand, I just like the way it smells.