I can't speak to the first photo at Attaturk's, but the subsequent photos are cropped from larger ones in which the beer bottle is clearly visible. Unless someone maliciously photoshopped the label (possible but unlikely, I think), it's a Buckler: a nonalcoholic brew. I had plenty of them in my teetotaling days. They have less than 0.5 percent alcohol, about the same as bottled orange juice.
I suspect Bush is back on the sauce, or worse, in private moments. But whoever cropped the bottle label out of those photos, or chose photos that omit the label from the sequence of photos, is lying to us by omission.
We do not need to do this. There is plenty of evidence that Bush is brain-dead, mentally unstable and/or on some sort of mind-altering substance without falsely accusing him of drinking alcohol in public.
I have seen the bottle in other photos of this same sequence and it is non-alcoholic. The series made me laugh more for his body language and facial expressions than for suggesting he had beer. I believe his head was tilted in response to a laugh others at the table were sharing.
He knew the photographers were there. His handlers would not let him be drinking real stuff so openly (unless they put real stuff in the non-alcoholic bottle....)
You and I both know why he's mocked for this, because the enormous elephant in the room which no one can discuss. Bush is a dry drunk and he has never had assistance. So all of the bad characteristics are clearly obvious. We aren't supposed to see it, talk about it, know about it. But all of us DO know about it. We can see it.
So we go for every mangled sentence, every botched job, every stupid and unnecessary war. We go for his wide open mouth chewing, his unwanted back massages, his pissing off friendly nations. All of these things are tangled up with the things that drove him to drink in the first place.
We know he isn't drinking real beer. But we can mock him for it anyway.
OK. I do have a vestigial suspicion that the omission was intentional on someone's part... not you, of course; whoever postprocessed the photos... but I'll let it go.
If Mr. Bush needs to be perceived as not partaking of Germany's finest products (or, for that matter, the excellent inexpensive reds of your fine state, which I consume almost every day), I'm willing to give him the benefit of a doubt. Bush needs help: he is visibly unstable, and I've heard a licensed psychotherapist say as much in her unguarded moments. Whatever inconsequential thing we can do to drag him toward sanity for the next year and more is probably worth doing.
I agree that Bush is at least a dry drunk, though I'd say he's more than a little damp on some days. Bush's chemical addictions, past and/or present, are (among many other factors) affecting his ability to presidentate... presidentize... whatever. Being naturally clumsy on my feet, I can understand Bush's bicycle crashes, SegWay segues, fear of riding horses, etc. in terms that have nothing to do with alcohol consumption. But allowing his addictions to overwhelm him is not very presidential of him. He should drink, or not drink, depending on whether he thinks it interferes with his work. And we shouldn't have to care about it one way or the other. That we have to speculate at all is a sign of how low his presidentition has fallen.
"That we have to speculate at all is a sign of how low his presidentition has fallen."
Exactly. Someone who has been cured or at least shown the way out of an addiction is able to talk about it. The deadening silence from this man and this administration have been fatal to trust, and speculation and conspiracy seep in to fill the gaps.
Bush has been a walking textbook of psychopathologies and we will be talking about the horrid little man for decades.
4 comments:
I can't speak to the first photo at Attaturk's, but the subsequent photos are cropped from larger ones in which the beer bottle is clearly visible. Unless someone maliciously photoshopped the label (possible but unlikely, I think), it's a Buckler: a nonalcoholic brew. I had plenty of them in my teetotaling days. They have less than 0.5 percent alcohol, about the same as bottled orange juice.
I suspect Bush is back on the sauce, or worse, in private moments. But whoever cropped the bottle label out of those photos, or chose photos that omit the label from the sequence of photos, is lying to us by omission.
We do not need to do this. There is plenty of evidence that Bush is brain-dead, mentally unstable and/or on some sort of mind-altering substance without falsely accusing him of drinking alcohol in public.
I have seen the bottle in other photos of this same sequence and it is non-alcoholic. The series made me laugh more for his body language and facial expressions than for suggesting he had beer. I believe his head was tilted in response to a laugh others at the table were sharing.
He knew the photographers were there. His handlers would not let him be drinking real stuff so openly (unless they put real stuff in the non-alcoholic bottle....)
You and I both know why he's mocked for this, because the enormous elephant in the room which no one can discuss. Bush is a dry drunk and he has never had assistance. So all of the bad characteristics are clearly obvious. We aren't supposed to see it, talk about it, know about it. But all of us DO know about it. We can see it.
So we go for every mangled sentence, every botched job, every stupid and unnecessary war. We go for his wide open mouth chewing, his unwanted back massages, his pissing off friendly nations. All of these things are tangled up with the things that drove him to drink in the first place.
We know he isn't drinking real beer. But we can mock him for it anyway.
OK. I do have a vestigial suspicion that the omission was intentional on someone's part... not you, of course; whoever postprocessed the photos... but I'll let it go.
If Mr. Bush needs to be perceived as not partaking of Germany's finest products (or, for that matter, the excellent inexpensive reds of your fine state, which I consume almost every day), I'm willing to give him the benefit of a doubt. Bush needs help: he is visibly unstable, and I've heard a licensed psychotherapist say as much in her unguarded moments. Whatever inconsequential thing we can do to drag him toward sanity for the next year and more is probably worth doing.
I agree that Bush is at least a dry drunk, though I'd say he's more than a little damp on some days. Bush's chemical addictions, past and/or present, are (among many other factors) affecting his ability to presidentate... presidentize... whatever. Being naturally clumsy on my feet, I can understand Bush's bicycle crashes, SegWay segues, fear of riding horses, etc. in terms that have nothing to do with alcohol consumption. But allowing his addictions to overwhelm him is not very presidential of him. He should drink, or not drink, depending on whether he thinks it interferes with his work. And we shouldn't have to care about it one way or the other. That we have to speculate at all is a sign of how low his presidentition has fallen.
"That we have to speculate at all is a sign of how low his presidentition has fallen."
Exactly. Someone who has been cured or at least shown the way out of an addiction is able to talk about it. The deadening silence from this man and this administration have been fatal to trust, and speculation and conspiracy seep in to fill the gaps.
Bush has been a walking textbook of psychopathologies and we will be talking about the horrid little man for decades.
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