Beating Around the Bush

Table of Contents

 

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.