Freedom's Just Another Word...

The Dubster, during the '00 Campaign, nicknamed (in his goofy frat-boy style) Maureen (Mo) Dowd — the acidulous Op-Ed columnist for the NY Fishwrap: "The Cobra." The Op-Ed staff was rejoined by Gail Collins in 2007 and this blog immediately nicknamed her "The Krait" so that The Cobra had company in this blog. Today, The Krait bites The Dubster (for the last time?) and stumbles within her riff on The Dubster's favorite word: "Freedom." That word has become debased and meaningless as The Dubster has babbled for these long, dark, past eight years. The Krait hissed at The Dubster's abuse of "Freedom": "...[I]t’s getting hard to hear it used without remembering Janis Joplin’s line about how freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose." Unfortunately, The Krait misspoke: Janis Joplin sang "Me and Bobby McGee" on her "Pearl" album in 1971. The lyrics were written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster in 1969. Nonetheless, the truth remains: Freedom has become just another word for nothin' left to lose, thanks to The Dubster. If this is a (fair & balanced) semantic distinction, so be it.

PS: While this blog is singing, hark back to 1933 when a parody of an earlier "White House Blues" by Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers rang throughout the land. In 2009, substitute Bush for Hoover and Obama for Roosevelt in the lyrics:

Look here, Mr. Hoover, it's see what you done;
You went off a-fishin', let the country go to ruin.
Now he's gone, I'm glad he's gone.

Roosevelt's in the White House, doin' his best,
While old Hoover is layin' 'round and takin' his rest.
Now he's gone, I'm glad he's gone.

Pants all busted, patches all way down,
People got so ragged they couldn't go to town.
Now he's gone, I'm glad he's gone.

Workin' in the coal mines, twenty cents a ton,
Fourteen long hours and your work day is done.
Now he's gone, I'm glad he's gone.

People all angry, they all got the blues,
Wearing patched britches and old tennis shoes.
Now he's gone, I'm glad he's gone.

Got up this morning, all I could see
Was corn bread and gravy just a-waitin' for me.
And now he's gone, I'm glad he's gone.

Look here, Mr. Hoover, it's see what you done;
You went off a-fishin', let the country go to ruin.
Now he's gone, I'm glad he's gone.

Amen.

[x NY Fishwrap]
He’s Leaving. Really.
By Gail Collins

Tonight President George W. Bush bids adieu to the American people.

Excitement mounts.

The man has been saying goodbye for so long, he’s come to resemble one of those reconstituted rock bands that have been on a farewell tour since 1982. We had exit interviews by the carload and then a final press conference on Monday, in which he reminisced about his arrival on the national stage in 2000. “Just seemed like yesterday,” he said.

I think I speak for the entire nation when I say that the way this transition has been dragging on, even yesterday does not seem like yesterday. And the last time George W. Bush did not factor into our lives feels like around 1066.

So far, the Bush farewell appearances have not drawn a lot of rave reviews. (Most striking, perhaps, was a critique of that final press conference from Ted Anthony of The Associated Press: “It all felt strangely intimate and, occasionally, uncomfortable, in the manner of seeing a plumber wearing jeans that ride too low.”) A Gallup poll did find that his approval rating had risen slightly since they began, but this was probably due to enthusiasm for the part about his going away.

“Sometimes you misunderestimated me,” Bush told the Washington press corps. This is not the first time our president has worried about misunderestimation, so it’s fair to regard this not as a slip of the tongue, but as something the president of the United States thinks is a word. The rhetoric is the one part of the administration we’re surely going to miss. We are about to enter a world in which our commander in chief speaks in full sentences, and I do not know what we’re going to do to divert ourselves on slow days.

The White House has promised that in his final address, the president will be joined by a small group of everyday American heroes, which means that the only person on stage with a history of failing to perform well in moments of stress will be the main speaker.

Bush is going to devote some of his time to defending his record, although there has been quite a bit of that already. Over the last few weeks we have learned that he thinks the Katrina response worked out rather well except for one unfortunate photo-op, and that he regards the fact that we invaded another country on the basis of false information as a “disappointment.” Since Bush also referred to the disappointments of his White House tenure as “a minor irritant” it’s perhaps best to think of the weapons of mass destruction debacle as a pimple on the administration’s otherwise rosy complexion.

If there’s any suspense about the speech it is how many times Bush will use the word “freedom,” which popped up 27 times in his relatively brief second inaugural. The man who gave us Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Freedom Agenda, the USA Freedom Corps and the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has so thoroughly debased one of the most profound concepts in our national vocabulary that it’s getting hard to hear it used without remembering Janis Joplin’s line about how freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

There are a lot of ways to approach this farewell-speech business. Ronald Reagan started with winning folksiness, then lurched into a warning against big government and a plea to raise a new generation of patriots that knows “who Jimmy Doolittle was.” Bill Clinton’s sounded very much like a bid for a third term. (“Thirty-five million Americans have used the family leave law ...”) On the other hand, anybody listening to it now would surely begin to tear up when Clinton got to the part about how he was leaving the country “on track to be debt-free” by the end of 2009.

History does suggest that Bush performs best in venues like this one, in which he has a long lead time and virtually no actual role in preparing the words he is about to say. But still, what could he possibly tell the country that would change anybody’s opinion about the last eight years?

“My fellow Americans, before I leave you next week I want you to know that...

A) “Although things have gone very wrong, I take comfort in the realization that Dick Cheney was actually in control from the get-go. Honest, I never even knew half the people in the cabinet.”

B) “Laura and I have come to realize that all things considered, retirement to a mansion in Texas is just totally inappropriate. And so we take our leave to begin a new life as missionaries at a small rescue station in the Gobi desert ...”

C) “Surprise! This has all actually been a bad dream. It’s really still November of 2000 and tomorrow Al Gore is going to be elected president.”

Otherwise, the best possible approach for a farewell address might be for Bush to follow his father’s lead and just not give one. ♥

[Gail Collins joined the New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board and later as an op-ed columnist. In 2001 she became the first woman ever appointed editor of the Times editorial page. At the beginning of 2007, she stepped down and began a leave in order to finish a sequel to her book, America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines. Collins returned to The Times as a columnist in July 2007. Besides America's Women, which was published in 2003, Ms. Collins is the author of Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics, and The Millennium Book, which she co-authored with her husband, Dan Collins. Her new book is about American women since 1960. Collins has a degree in journalism from Marquette University and an M.A. in government from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.]

Copyright © 2009 The New York Times Company

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