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Elizabeth on Good read: 'Geldof and Bush: Diary From the Road,' by Geldof To comment on any posting, click on the word 'Comments' at the end of the item. |
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« Brilliant: Bowls made of crisp bacon | Main | Video: Hillary on SNL; Feminists: Must race and gender battle each other? » March 1, 2008Good read: 'Geldof and Bush: Diary From the Road,' by Geldof
Former Boomtown Rat and Live Aid organizer Geldof is officially writing about President Bush as they travel on Air Force One to Ghana. The story begins, I gave the President my book. He raised an eyebrow. "Who wrote this for ya, Geldof?" he said without looking up from the cover. Very dry. "Who will you get to read it for you, Mr. President?" I replied. No response. But his point is very different: The Bush regime has been divisive — but not in Africa. I read it has been incompetent — but not in Africa. It has created bitterness — but not here in Africa. Here, his administration has saved millions of lives.
The fact- and opinion-filled piece is a remarkable first-person account of what must have been a genuinely weird encounter, given the author's ambivalence about his subject. The Irish-born Geldof has found the "compassionate conservative" of Bush's 2000 campaign, and calls out how he has compartmentalized it: At one point I suggest that he will never be given credit for good policies, like those here in Africa, because many people view him "as a walking crime against humanity." He looks very hurt by that. And I'm sorry I said it, because he's a very likable fellow It's not all policy discussion. There is a bit about how the laundry gets done on Air Force One, and the only scene actually set in Ghana -- since this is a profile of the president, not an account of their trip -- includes this odd bit: At a lunch for Peace Corps volunteers in Ghana... One woman tells how six months previously, she was bitten by a cobra and rushed to hospital. As she was passing out, she tells the President, "that little voice whispered to me, 'You'll be all right,' and I was." She pauses, and says meaningfully to him: "You know that little voice, I think?" "Not really," Bush says drily. "I've never been bitten by a cobra." Geldof does not record whether the President was backing away slowly as he said this.
Posted by Sheila Lennon
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my passport photo blogging since 2002 garden blogs archived headlines  Sheila Lennon is features & interactive producer of projo.com, the Web site of The Providence (R.I.) Journal Rhode Island |
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