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George W. Bush = David Brent?

Matthew Fluxington

11:28 / 30.10.03

Having taken a closer look at the full transcript of Tuesday's press conference, however, it became vividly clear: the president must be taking leadership cues from David Brent of BBC America's second-season hit television series, "The Office"). David (brilliantly played by actor Ricky Gervais) is the bumbling and deluded Regional Manager at a paper-supply company in an office park in the middle of nowhere.

11:56 / 30.10.03

Nah, Brent was a successful singer/songwriter (supported by a little known band called Texas) and a stand up comic, what's George ever done?

Matthew Fluxington

12:01 / 30.10.03

When he was younger, he threw a kettle over a pub.

12:07 / 30.10.03

That explains why he's got no tie in that picture. I'd still vote for Brent over Bush.

Tryphena Absent

12:17 / 30.10.03

George came from Texas! He also killed a lot of people while he was governor. Oh and let's not forget that he's a born again Christian and is pretty biased against other religions. I'd say Bush has done quite a lot and frankly I wish he was David Brent, a man who would never have the guts to kill anyone.

12:18 / 30.10.03

I bet both their staffs keep removing the batteries from their Billy Bigmouth Basses.

Tryphena Absent

12:49 / 30.10.03

Oh, go burn Bush Toddifer.

Matthew Fluxington

12:53 / 30.10.03

That's true. David Brent would never actually hurt anyone.

But their management style/personalities are pretty similar.

12:57 / 30.10.03

Ah, but is Gareth really Rumsfeld, Cheney or Rice?

Matthew Fluxington

13:02 / 30.10.03

Gareth is probably Rumsfield.

12:38 / 27.07.06

Minutes ago, I´ve read a german article about the US media saying, there has been a Grope Gate at the G8 summit last week. Bush grabbed my chancellor from behind, and as she recoiled in surprise, he whistlingly went his way, as if nothing had happened.

From the article, it seemed as if the some US media actually see this as a sexual assault, which is silly. Bush proved once more, he really is a buffon. Merkel just shrugged it off as a lame try at being funny and refuses to comment any further, saying it is a US not a german debate. And she´s right, until now, I haven´t heard anything about this.

David Brent, yes that´s exactly the thing he would have done, too.

*

14:41 / 27.07.06

Well, your media is right that it's a pretty popular story over here, but mostly in blogs. But the people I'd expect to be in an uproar over an actual sexual assault (i.e. feminist blogs) seem mostly to be making fun of Bush's borderline-creepy blundericiousness rather than outraged, so I'm not sure how seriously the US freedia are taking sexual assault claims either. If Chancellor Merkel appeared to read the situation that way, that would be another matter entirely.

But of course, politically speaking, she can't, can she? How would German media respond, do you think, if she said Bush had been inappropriate in a way she felt was sexual? How about the US media? How would an effort at seeking redress be received? Framing this as an infringement of personal boundaries which was sexually inappropriate is extremely inconvenient for everyone, and many women, faced with a situation where asserting that wrongdoing has occurred is more traumatic than the actual occurrence, opt to let things slide. Which, of course, enables creepy people to continue being creepy, because they don't understand they've done wrong.

Not that that's necessarily what's happening here; if Chancellor Merkel is able to shrug off (sorry) something I wouldn't, that's fine. I just wanted to suggest that situations where women are in high profile positions of authority can paradoxically make them less able to report if their boundaries have been violated.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:44 / 27.07.06

Someone really needs to ask Ann Coulter if that makes him gay, though.

15:17 / 27.07.06

I don´t know about the US, but the german media would laugh about being touched at the shoulder being a sexual assault. And they would say with 99%, that saying that is an offense to people, who really are victims of such crimes.

Merkel if anything, gets a plus in approval ratings for this (keeping cool and giving Bush the opportunity to look like the global village idiot), and it would help take the attention from her being a nonexistant politician ever since she became chancellor. Our leading satire magazine calls her Angela the Strangela.

*

15:56 / 27.07.06

Ah, well done then.

I don't mean that being touched on the shoulder should be considered sexual assault— just that unnecessarily touching someone who doesn't want to be touched is not okay. It bespeaks a certain entitlement to a person's body as if they are not a person with their own entitlement to their own body. It's icky, which is what I think the bloggers are getting at.

16:27 / 27.07.06

I don't know, I get a thrill by being touched by strangers. I understand that perhaps not all chancellors feel that way, however.

And yes, that is exactly what David Brent might do. In fact, didn't he do something like that in one episode?

17:14 / 27.07.06

Aha, as so often, it is life imitates art!

Daemon est Deus Inversus

18:50 / 27.07.06

I'm really tired about the threads about George W. Bush. Two or three times a month, I walk into a party or into the steam bath at the health club and hear that he's "stupid."

So the guy failed out of Yale, worked as a lineman at a telephone company, etc. He pulled himself up by the the boot-straps, graduated from college, was Ronald Reagan's driver at the 1980 Convention....

18:55 / 27.07.06

As you can see, the thread started three years ago. What does it say about George Bush, when we still have the need to point out, what an idiot that "world leader" is?

It may be tiring for you to hear about it, but the rest of the world is tired of him and his cronies. The man was responsible for hundreds of killings even when he was not yet the president.

So we will keep on making threads about him until the world gets rid of his presidency.

Daemon est Deus Inversus

19:04 / 27.07.06

Well, honsetly, George Bush is a very boring person. I doubt that he'd grab anyone, Laura, a German chancellor, etc. I'd like to see what would have happenned if he'd tried to squeeze "Der Alte's" cheeks after the wall went up though!

20:42 / 27.07.06

When I saw that story I immediately thought of an old boss who used to do that to me all the time. It made me feel very uncomfortable and vaguely defensive. In fact I don't particularly like receiving that gesture from non-work peers with whom I'm not very close, either... I don't see it as necessarily sexual, but I think it presumes intimacy in a way that seems demeaning to the shoulder-rub-receiver. I think when one does it to a non-intimate friend it becomes a sort of propietary gesture - I can transgress your personal boundaries because you're mine. Extremely weird between heads of state, to say the least.

20:52 / 27.07.06

That sounds about right. And it triggered a memory of a colleague who did that to me, too. She thought, she was the boss of me and colleagues of mine, because she had the same status as our boss, and we sometimes reminded her of her not being our superior.

She also made "funny" comments. For example, when she wanted to end a phone call, she said: "Now you can go back to sleep." Haha, how comical!

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

21:13 / 27.07.06

For all that this might be true, isn't Bush's David Brentness (?) the thing that got him elected? I've heard consistently that Bush was "the candidate you would like to have a beer or a cup of coffee with," (one source here), and that was one of a few factors that is attributed with edging him up over the top against Kerry, who got painted as being much stiffer than "good ol' George."

Uttery impossible to DO, but I'm curious as to whether David Brent would win a Presidential election against Kerry or Gore. If he didn't have that suspicious foreign accent, that is.

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:27 / 27.07.06

was Ronald Reagan's driver at the 1980 Convention....

Really? So, he's like one of the "bodyguards" who then ended up getting a "push" in WWF's "Rock and Wrestle" phase? That makes a lot of sense.