The New Purpose of Fox News

by: Matt Stoller

Fri Dec 26, 2008 at 17:01

Mr. Bush's 2006 reading list shows his literary tastes. The nonfiction ran from biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Babe Ruth, King Leopold, William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, LBJ and Genghis Khan to Andrew Roberts's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900," James L. Swanson's "Manhunt," and Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower." Besides eight Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald, Mr. Bush tackled Michael Crichton's "Next," Vince Flynn's "Executive Power," Stephen Hunter's "Point of Impact," and Albert Camus's "The Stranger," among others.

Here's Timothy Noah in Slate.

Turning to the Bush clan, we learn in Kitty Kelley's book The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty that New Yorker writer Brendan Gill was once a guest of George H.W. and Barbara Bush at their summer house in Kennebunkport, Maine. Stumbling through the place late at night in search of something to read, the only volume he could find was The Fart Book.

I sort of understand Rove's strategy of insisting that George W. Bush is an intellectual heavyweight, even though he's obviously just a dolt that loves fart jokes.  Rove enjoys tweaking liberals by preying on their insecurities, which he used to do when he was powerful and the Bush administration was taken seriously by insisting that they were effete eggheads out of touch with the real America.  Only, now, there's nothing whatsoever admirable about the Bush Presidency and no one really believes Rove is a political genius, and so Rove is reduced to pretending that Bush is some sort of bookworm.  Take that, liberals!  Or something like that.

I think someone should establish a musty hospice for the careers of dated political operatives, and stick Rove there.  Oh wait, an embarrassing political attic already exists, and it's called Fox News.