According to this article in The Guardian, our fearless leader—when not holding his hands over his ears and bellowing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" to drown out all that war protest nonsense outside his front door—is into some heavy reading during his five-week vacation:
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky
and
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry
My theory is that he's just flippinig through these tomes wondering where all the "neat pictures" are, dammit. Such books are a waste of time for the President. He ought to work his brain over something like War for Dummies or Help Me, I'm a Big Huge Liar. Grrrrr.
Also according to the article, the President's former speechwriter David Frum said his old boss is, "often uncurious and as a result ill-informed." Which seems to me to be quite the understatement.
7 comments:
Understatement indeed, but a cathy turn of phrase to describe other people I know...
Sad thing, I think, to be described as "uncurious."
"He ought to work his brain over something like War for Dummies or Help Me, I'm a Big Huge Liar."
Hear hear.
And uncuriousity (is this a word?) is a sad characteristic. Or un-characteristic.
I became curious (hahahahaha) and looked up "uncurious," which, in fact, is not in any dictionary that I checked. Looks like the correct word is "incurious."
There were a number of web sites, though, that referred to the President as "Uncurious George," as opposed to, you know, the children's book character Curious George. One site quotes Edmund Burke who said, "The first and simplest emotion of the human mind is curiosity." Hmmmmmmm.
That Edmund Burke quote--does it suggest 1) that GWB is an extremely complicated person, or 2) that GWB is not human?
Re: "uncurious"
The OED online says that it is actually a word and =incurious, but the last use cited of "uncurious" was almost 150 years ago, in 1860. Perhaps that means it is no longer a word.
Not human! I vote for not human!
I didn't check the OED online (which is why you are the grad student and I am, well, not). "Incurious" sounds far better. It makes perfect sense, though, that a former Bush speechwriter would choose the clunkier "uncurious."
Ha ha ha!
But I think it's to Frum's credit that he is a former employee.
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