21 September 2005 - 1:31pm
Bush falls off the wagon?
If this weren't such a serious concern, I'd blow off this story:
Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe.
Family sources have told how the 59-year-old president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster.
His worried wife yelled at him: "Stop, George."
Following the shocking incident, disclosed here for the first time, Laura privately warned her husband against "falling off the wagon" and vowed to travel with him more often so that she can keep an eye on Dubya, the sources add.
Now there've been rumors. And I confess I had to wonder why, for example, it took him 4 days to appear in public after the Asian tsunami last December. But this is very dangerous, if true. You don't want a drunken fool running the country. (A fool is bad enough.)
And this is just the kind of story the press won't want to report.
Another source said: "I'm only surprised to hear that he hadn't taken a shot sooner. Before Katrina, he was at his wit's end. I've known him for years. He's been a good ol' Texas boy forever. George had a drinking problem for years that most professionals would say needed therapy. He doesn't believe in it [therapy], he never got it. He drank his way through his youth, through college and well into his thirties. Everyone's drinking around him."
Another source said: "A family member told me they fear George is 'falling apart.' The First Lady has been assigned the job of gatekeeper." Bush's history of drinking dates back to his youth. Speaking of his time as a young man in the National Guard, he has said: "One thing I remember, and I'm most proud of, is my drinking and partying. Those were the days my friends. Those were the good old days!"
Age 26 in 1972, he reportedly rounded off a night's boozing with his 16-year-old brother Marvin by challenging his father to a fight.
Still, this is the National Enquirer -- not exactly a scion of credibility. Yet people do fall off the wagon, and if anyone's in a high-pressure job, it's W. And with the reports of his radical mood shifts and angry outbursts at the staff, you have to wonder. It was only a couple weeks ago that we learned that staffers were afraid to interrupt the president's vacation to tell him about the Katrina disaster.
Scary shit.
"I think it's a concern that Bush disappears during times of stress. He spends so much time on his ranch. It's very frightening."
[Via Wonkette.]
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Comments
but on the OJ Simpson story, it was the paper that every reporter in America was running to catch up with -- and never did.
The National Enquirer was at one time regarded as a reliable source for certain kinds of celebrity stories. As an example, I first read there that Gilda Radnor was seriously ill. As far as I know, that story did not run anywhere else for several months, probably out of regard for her privacy. In that case, the world did not need to know. In this case, of course, the world absolutely MUST know.
I'm not clear whether the Enquirer is still reliable in those situations. I seem to recall that its credibility has since been weakened by a successful lawsuit for false reporting.
Anyway, MG, this is a great post, and thanks for letting us all know.
I don't think blogs should be playing this allegation up. It's unverifiable and comes from a generally disreputable source. There are too many reasons, based on sound evidence, that the president is incompetent, disingenuous, and committed to harmful policies to sully the credibility we need for those critiques with this kind of rumor-mongering. (If the allegation becomes a pattern, and includes better sources, we can reasonably reevaluate our reticence.)
I was quite clear about my skepticism of the source. And I am not "playing this allegation up" -- I was just expressing concern, given the stakes involved. Incompetence, mendaciousness and wrongheadedness are quite different from drunken irrationality. If you've ever had to deal with an alcoholic off the wagon, then you know that we're not talking about just poor judgement.
What we do know from other sources is that he often disappears for days on end, is prone to unpredictable irrational outbursts of rage at his staffers, and has a long and rich history of addictive behaviors, from hellyer college days to present.