{"id":971,"date":"2006-08-16T09:06:05","date_gmt":"2006-08-16T09:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2006\/08\/16\/standing-on-a-beach\/"},"modified":"2006-08-16T09:06:05","modified_gmt":"2006-08-16T09:06:05","slug":"standing-on-a-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2006\/08\/16\/standing-on-a-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"Standing on a beach …"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I'd been right, I was still right, I was always right.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

President Bush, Tony Snow tells us<\/a>, read Albert Camus' novel The Stranger<\/i> during his vacation in Crawford, Texas.<\/p>\n

\"Killinganarab_cov_1\"<\/a>Steve Benen \u2014 crossposting at Crooks & Liars<\/a> and The Carpetbagger Report<\/a> \u2014 finds this hard to believe.<\/p>\n

So do I. Even staunch Republicans have raised questions about Bush's intellect<\/a>, but it's not just that. It's that it would be hard to imagine a novel that was more out-of-character for George W. Bush to be reading \u2014 and for his press secretary to be bragging about him reading. The Stranger<\/i> (intellectual, atheist, French<\/i>) seems more like something Tony Snow would accusing Ned Lamont of having read as evidence of his supposed Blue-state elitism.<\/p>\n

So for kicks, I'm taking nominations in comments for George W. Bush's Implausible Anthology. I'll start with a few of nominations of my own: D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterly's Lover;<\/i> Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here;<\/i> James Joyce, Finnegans Wake.<\/i><\/p>\n

On the other hand, The Stranger<\/i> involves the senseless killing of an Arab followed by a public execution, and it begins with the sentence, \"Mother died today.\" So maybe he liked it.<\/p>\n

(CX: <\/b>Finnegans \u2014 no apostrophe. Thanks PNH & Hagsrus.<\/i>)<\/p>\n

Update: <\/b>George W. Bush reads Camus (as told to Julian Sanchez)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’d been right, I was still right, I was always right. President Bush, Tony Snow tells us, read Albert Camus’ novel The Stranger during his vacation in Crawford, Texas. Steve Benen \u2014 crossposting at Crooks & Liars and The Carpetbagger Report \u2014 finds this hard to believe. So do I. Even staunch Republicans have raised […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nStanding on a beach ...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'd been right, I was still right, I was always right. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Standing on a beach ...","description":"I'd been right, I was still right, I was always right. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}