Maybe Senility Is Settling In

On Friday, President Obama and former President George H.W. Bush commemorated the twentieth anniversary of President Bush's "Thousand Points of Light" speech by hosting a Presidential Forum on Service at the George Bush Presidential Library on the campus of Texas A&M University. The event honored the tremendous advances in the service movement which was started during President Bush's administration and has been sustained and expanded through the leadership of President Clinton and President Obama. President Bush issued a letter the day before, asking the "Texas A&M Family" for their assistance in showing "the open, decent and welcoming Aggie spirit" to President Obama.

Despite his letter of civility regarding President Obama's visit, President Bush conducted a radio interview with CBS News which contained a slightly different message. Although President Bush preached during the interview that President Obama is "entitled to civil treatment and intellectual honesty when it comes to critics", he then proceeds to insult MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann by describing them as "a couple of sick puppies". President Bush continued with the following hypocritical comments:

• "The way they, the way they treat my son and treat anybody that's opposed to their point of view is just horrible."
• "When our son was President, they just hammered him mercilessly, and I think obscenely, a lot of the time."
• During a discussion regarding the critics of his son's wonderful tenure in the White House, President Bush stated that those individuals "weren't singled out as much as they should have been".
• Regardless of the fact he labeled Maddow and Olbermann as "sick puppies", President Bush declared that harsh criticism "should not be par for the course. To the degree it turns off one student or one person from serving, that's bad."

This lesson in civility comes from the man who hired Roger Ailes as his media strategist for his 1988 presidential campaign against former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Ailes, the current President of FOX News Channel and Chairman of the FOX Television Stations Group, was once described by fellow lowlife Lee Atwater as possessing "two speeds -- attack and destroy". When contemplating the content of a campaign commercial concerning William Horton, a convicted felon from Massachusetts who committed assault, armed robbery and rape while released on a weekend furlough program, Ailes remarked that "The only question is whether we depict [Horton] with a knife in his hand or without it". As the executive producer of the short lived television show, "The Rush Limbaugh Show", Ailes referred to President Bill Clinton as the "hippie President" and verbally attacked the so-called "liberal bigots".