RUGBYGATE….Slacktivist tells us today that George Bush apparently has a habit of exaggerating his college sports career in the presence of foreign leaders:
Now, okay, this isn’t that big a deal. I’m not even sure it’s a little deal. But the fact is the guy played a bit of intercollegiate intramurals and he likes to tell people that it was more than that — that he played Ivy League varsity.
That’s kind of smarmy and less than admirable, but whatever.
Still, consider the kind of treatment this story would be getting if it were John Kerry, rather than George W. Bush, who was caught lying about his athletic resume.
Mickey Kaus would latch onto the story for at least a week, interpreting it as a deeply meaningful and revealing metaphor — maybe even a “synecdoche.” Mickey would begin referring to it through some semi-clever nickname — “Rugbygate” — and Slate would publish day after day of his explorations of all the deplorable things such a story might indicate about the senator’s character. (All of which would be more substantial than the confused trivialities Kaus has recently been peddling on Microsoft’s dime.)
That sounds about right. I don’t happen to be either part of Mickey Kaus’ fan club or part of the Mickey Kaus death squad, but his unending armchair psychoanalytic bashing of John Kerry with virtually no grounding in actual events is a wonder of the modern world. I wish he could think up something about Kerry that was actually worth saying. Either that or explain what childhood trauma it was that led to his pathological Kerryphobia.
POSTSCRIPT: This also reminds me that some magazine ? the Weekly Standard? ? devoted an entire cover story sometime in the 90s to allegations that Bill Clinton took a few too many mulligans during his golf outings. I eagerly await a similar cover story on George Bush’s athletic exaggerations.
