An illness has o’ertaken our house. I’m going back to bed for 90 minutes. See you sometime after that. Until then, discuss:
Is Lindsey Graham talking tough because he knows he’ll never have to dollar up? Or is this insanity President Palin’s 2013 No. 1 on the to-do list?
“The Walking Dead” — I do not like so much, Sam-I-am. I’m assuming this is the end of any sort of content restrictions on basic cable.
I could not bear to watch Jorge Bush last night with Matt Lauer. What did I miss? Did he offer any new details on his bloody baby brother? Like, among other things: How big a jar? And what did they do with it afterward?
If I’m going to be functional at all today, I must get more sleep. Later.
Pam said on November 9, 2010 at 9:06 am
The illness is here too. Everyone is sick except me. I hate this!
67 chars
4dbirds said on November 9, 2010 at 9:17 am
Sorry you’re not feeling well and I hope you get better soon.
I record Walking Dead and fast forward through all the commercials. I like it but then I love zombie, vampire and post apocalyptic movies. Slasher porn I don’t care for. That shit is too real and happens in real life.
Who puts their miscarried baby in a jar? I’m not sure what I would do, maybe wrap it in towels but put it in a jar? Why would you show your other children? People are weird.
468 chars
Deggjr said on November 9, 2010 at 9:33 am
So in 1962 or so, hospitals would allow people to take the remains of miscarried babies home? My wife miscarried and that baby was very real to us, but it never crossed our minds to put the remains in a jar to take home. I don’t recall the hospital offering that option.
272 chars
Dorothy said on November 9, 2010 at 9:34 am
I just watched the first episode of Walking Dead yesterday. I squinch my eyes shut when I see a gun aimed at a zombie so I’m avoiding the worst gore, I hope. It’s too soon for me to say if I “like it” or not.
My two miscarriages took place at 9 weeks and 12 weeks gestational age. It would never have been my wont to preserve anything because there really wasn’t anything recognizable to save. I can’t begin to guess why Mrs. Bush preserved the remains but perhaps she thought the hospital would have something that could be used in case they wanted a burial of some sort. It would depend on how far along she was.
edit for Deggjr: I don’t think they took the remains home. I think she collected them when she started miscarrying at home, and that is how she took the fetus to the hospital.
804 chars
coozledad said on November 9, 2010 at 9:36 am
The whole baby in a jar thing is beyond weird. Especially for people of means. It’s the kind of thing you expect from preliterates, awash in shame and superstition.
But some families just use their wealth to preserve their morbid sensibilities. The trait even seems stronger in those with perverse dynastic ambitions. Every time you open the can of cheap stew that is more intimate Bush family revelations, it’s like wandering into a Hapsburg vault and taking a good strong whiff.
481 chars
Randy said on November 9, 2010 at 9:48 am
I am a zombie genre fan, but have not warmed to The Walking Dead quite yet. The idea of a series seems too depressing. Movies suit the genre better, and the 28 Days/Months series is my favorite.
A little off topic: finally saw Cloverfield on the weekend. That was a lot of fun.
280 chars
Deborah said on November 9, 2010 at 10:29 am
I agree it seems odd that you’d show your teenage son the fetus in a jar. Seems like that would totally gross out a kid of that age. And I agree with previous comments, it also seems odd to put the fetus in a jar to begin with. But then again she may have been distraught and not thinking properly. I know I would have been terribly shook up at that point if it had happened to me.
382 chars
Bob (not Greene) said on November 9, 2010 at 10:33 am
Keeping a miscarriage. Yeah, that’s normal. What other mementos from childbirth did Babs keep, I wonder? Oh, and about Lindsey Graham and general GOP talk lately. Everyone knows that while the GOP controls the house, the Dems still control the Senate and presidency, right? I mean, you’d think that the GOP just took over all three branches of government. The only thing the GOP is going to do is sit there and create gridlock, the way they’ve been doing for the past two years. I don’t think we’re going to start seeing the GOP unilaterally implementing some agenda — like attacking Iran (or, hell, getting rid of healthcare) — all of a sudden. Mainly, I think we’ll just be subjected to more crazy talk; hopefully, more people will be able to hear it this time around.
772 chars
Dave Kobiela said on November 9, 2010 at 10:46 am
We are sick here too. (Sneezing, runny nose, sore throat). I didn’t watch GWB either, but I’m sure there will be plenty to read about.
Line around 1/2 a block in Garrett this morning, waiting for the Community Harvest Food Bank truck. I don’t think they would have appreciated the Gov’t Cheese/Dogfood “joke”. Just sayin’.
329 chars
Dorothy said on November 9, 2010 at 10:48 am
Read about this yesterday in the Dispatch so I searched for it. Thought I’d share Mr. Don Draper and his fondness for a certain word: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DCafQqHJA
178 chars
Sue said on November 9, 2010 at 11:00 am
I’ve always said to my kids “Sleep heals”, so go for it, Nancy.
I didn’t watch George either, but I did hear about the baby in the jar. I think there’s a perception problem here. Everyone’s talking like Barbara used it for a teaching moment when from what I’m reading George was trying to get his mom to the hospital and she had the presence of mind to take the miscarriage remains with her. She probably wasn’t thinking clearly when she “showed” the jar to George; it doesn’t mean she was trying to indoctrinate an impressionable teenager. So, I’ll give George a pass on this, it was a crisis situation and that’s what he took away from it.
Now, the whole thing about the hurt feelings about what Kanye said, that’s a different matter.
742 chars
Rana said on November 9, 2010 at 11:19 am
Miscarried fetus in a jar + zombie movies = one disturbing image.
65 chars
adrianne said on November 9, 2010 at 11:21 am
The miscarriage story is just creepy on many levels: I know that doctors of that era wanted women to preserve the fetal remains, but showing it to your teenage son? No, no and no. My mother had two miscarriages when I was a teenager, and she wouldn’t dream of doing something like that.
286 chars
moe99 said on November 9, 2010 at 11:29 am
There was a story out during the GWB presidency, where a woman who was driving in a car with Barbara out of the long Bush driveway, watched as GWB, riding a mountain bike ahead of the car, drove slowly swerving from side to side to make sure that his mother took the longest time possible to exit the property. The woman wrote that GWB was obviously pissed at his mom. And this was when he was 30-40 years old.
I think putting tacky stories like this in his “memoir” are nothing more than that petulant adult, still trying to get back at his parents.
555 chars
Sue said on November 9, 2010 at 11:41 am
Moe, apparently George got permission from his mother to include the story, and he wanted to use it as an example of how his relationship with his mother was strengthened, not just to demonstrate his pro-life views. I still think the reaction to this story is misplaced.
I just defended GWB twice in a couple of hours. This is turning into an odd day.
354 chars
LAMary said on November 9, 2010 at 11:42 am
I think Barbara is and was a nasty piece of work. I think her daughters in law are all scared shitless of her. She’s got a lot of anger and rich white lady rage.
161 chars
coozledad said on November 9, 2010 at 11:48 am
I wonder what happened to her pool boy. The one with no health care who basically said the same thing as LA Mary. She’s a horsey old thing, prone to tantrums and devoid of grace.
Could be she hardened off when her husband was banging any fifth tier starlet who’d lay down in front of him.
289 chars
Larkspur said on November 9, 2010 at 11:50 am
Let’s give Barbara Bush the benefit of the doubt: she needed to get to the hospital, she was feeling really unwell, she had to carry the fetal remains in something, and she showed it to him for no reason I can discern except that she was weirded out and not entirely in control.
But why does he talk about it? In his book, on TV, in such lurid detail? At all? This is George W. Bush. Superficially he thinks he gains a few points with the anti-abortion folks. In fact, as moe99 observes, this is petulance. Petulance, and passive-aggressive hostility in an exceptionally graphic form. His powerful mother, his over-bearing, cold, mean mother, needs him – him! the wastrel loser – to drive her to the hospital because her woman-parts just exploded and for some reason he’s angry enough that he wants us to visualize her bleeding and in pain, her hands slick and shaking as she collects the fetus and puts it in a container, and goes to him for help.
Yeah, that’ll show her.
985 chars
nancy said on November 9, 2010 at 11:52 am
The missing piece here is the gestation. I’ve never miscarried to my knowledge, but from girlfriend debriefings I know that early on, there’s little to “save” and later on it’s far more likely to happen in a hospital in the first place. The only reason I can think of for a sane woman to do such a thing might be for the docs to ascertain “completion,” maybe? I recall from my large animal-keeping days that mares dies most often, postpartum, from incomplete deliveries, and will hemorrhage if a piece of the placenta is left behind. So that might be why she thought to pack it up and take it to the hospital.
That raises the question of what happens next. I’d think any normal hospital staff would take it from her upon arrival and do something with it, but maybe it’s different in Texas. Maybe they have fetal funerals there. But if it’s early enough to be called a miscarriage and not a stillbirth, what she had in that jar was mostly likely a lumpy, bloody soup of medical waste, and the fact Babs thought to share it with her son makes me wonder what was in her IV that day.
Thanks, everyone! I’m feeling much better now!
1133 chars
Larkspur said on November 9, 2010 at 11:53 am
Sue, I think you are probably right. But honestly, at the same time, I don’t think I am wrong.
95 chars
brian stouder said on November 9, 2010 at 11:53 am
Well, I’ll take a pass on the GWB discussion, except to say that I am motivated to read Laura’s book. I saw her speaking about her book on C-SPAN at the book festival she initiated in Washington DC. (when Sue mentioned that GWB got permission to use the jarring fetus story from Bar, it reminded me of Laura referring to several stories that GWB asked Laura to remove from her book, so that he could use them in his! She said she agreed, since they were really “his” stories, that she was retelling) I suspect that Laura is not afraid of Bar, despite that past history indicates that Mary is usually right. In any case, my guess is that her perspective will be the more interesting one.
702 chars
Sue said on November 9, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Nancy, in my days working in a hospital, the results of a miscarriage were called “products of conception” and were treated like a specimen, sent to the lab for a look-see. Sometimes the products of conception could actually give some information on what happened, say if you were having multiple miscarriages.
And some of the products of conception I saw were tiny and perfect and very sad to look at.
I knew nurses who requested to be assigned to miscarriage D&C procedures, so they could take the little specimen jar and do a tiny baptism in the corner of the operating room after the procedure and before the products were sent to the lab. It was probably illegal but I understood why they did it. No one really made a big deal of it.
749 chars
alex said on November 9, 2010 at 12:21 pm
I’m eating chili from my favorite deli, the perfect accompaniment to reading about Barbara Bush passing clots. A nice break from my job today reading about MRSA-infected orthopedic hardware.
190 chars
Mark P. said on November 9, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Re: Lindsey Graham, I reference an earlier comment: “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.” I’m just hoping that “whom” refers to the already lunatic wing of the republican party. That much has already come true. Here’s hoping for the rest.
I have to record and watch Walking Dead when my wife is otherwise occupied. So far it’s an unremarkable addition to the genre, but I like to see the Atlanta scenes. I have never seen the graphic novel, but I also like to try to identify scenes that might have come from a graphic novel. The scene where the camera backs away from the tank with the survivor trapped by hordes of ant-like zombies struck me as graphic-novel-like.
683 chars
Jim Neill said on November 9, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Brian,
I read Laura’s book, “Spoken from the Heart”, and wasn’t impressed. If you are a supporter of the GWB presidency, it reinforces everything you already believe. If you’re not a GWB supporter, there’s little new information. Not that I expected a critical expose, but as an example, the book runs 400+ pages, and there’s one sentence on the WMD fiasco.
360 chars
ROgirl said on November 9, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Distraught? Barbara Bush? Really?
33 chars
Peter said on November 9, 2010 at 12:44 pm
I can second Sue’s comment, because we had a few miscarriages. After the last miscarriage, the hospital informed us that after the lab tests they could send the remains to a funeral home.
Catholic Cemetaries runs a program where they’ll do a memorial service and bury the remains in a small plot for no charge. It was very therapeutic and helpful.
352 chars
prospero said on November 9, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Lindsay, Lindsay, Lindsay. My putatively NOT mentally defective Senator. I mean, Demint is too screwy to spell his own name correctly. (It’s either Demented or Dementor, not sure which.) Graham is like some poor soul in a psychologically abusive domestic situation, battered into functional bipolar behavior–nearly sensible Lindsay and nutso Lindsay.
This is the sort of adult stuff world leaders are supposed to do. This will not show up in the US press.
549 chars
Deborah said on November 9, 2010 at 12:51 pm
We just had a fire drill in our office, only for the 3rd and 4th floors of the building. When we got down to street level, there was Rahm Immanuel! He must have been on the 4th floor at the Real Estate Developer’s office.
I had fun walking downstairs from the third floor with my boot.
288 chars
Bob (not Greene) said on November 9, 2010 at 12:58 pm
OK, I admit, I didn’t RTFA before getting snarky. Now that I have, I’m completely weirded out and I can’t help calling at least partial bullshit on the whole thing. It says George has to drive her to the hospital. So he’s at least 16, I’m guessing (maybe anyone big enough to look over the wheel could drive back then, I don’t know). That would date this to 1962 at the earliest, three years after the Bushes’ youngest child was born. In 1962 Babs would have been 37 or 38. Her husband was still working in the private sector at the time. Why the hell wouldn’t he take her to the hospital instead of his teenage son? It just doesn’t add up. Again, this is all within the realm of possibility, but I am having lots of trouble with the whole thing. Any way you slice it, it’s like something out of a horror movie.
811 chars
Deggjr said on November 9, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Thanks Dorothy, I might have repeated that and the actual story is weird enough.
80 chars
Dorothy said on November 9, 2010 at 1:30 pm
I cannot f’ing believe I am defending GWB and his mother but some of you guys are being a little too heavy-handed about this whole story. Yes it’s weird that she showed George the remnants of his sibling in the mayo jar. I never would have done that, not even if it was one of my sisters driving me to the hospital. But if Babs miscarried while Big George was at work or out of town on business, she probably had to get to the hospital as fast as possible in case there was any more hemorrhaging. Take it from one who has had miscarriages – it’s not an event you can just endure by waiting in bed or on the toilet until your husband comes home at the usual time. Time is of the essence.
689 chars
A.Riley said on November 9, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Creepy creepy creepy.
21 chars
LAMary said on November 9, 2010 at 1:44 pm
“…This is the sort of adult stuff world leaders are supposed to do. This will not show up in the US press.”
You’re absolutely right Prospero. If it hasn’t started already, I’m sure Fox will feast on Obama leaving Indonesia early if it comes to that. Either he’s a coward or he shouldn’t have gone in the first place or it’s really expensive to change plans.
368 chars
nancy said on November 9, 2010 at 1:57 pm
OK, no more about the miscarriage. Eating lunch now.
52 chars
Rana said on November 9, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Miscarriages aren’t strange. Needing to go to the hospital after one isn’t strange. Saving the miscarried tissue to show the doctor isn’t strange. Asking your child, who can drive, to get you there quickly because it’s an emergency, isn’t strange.
Showing said child the miscarried tissue, that’s a bit strange.
Telling the world about all of the above, when you are the former child and a former president of the United States, is definitely strange. Creepy and self-centered, too.
501 chars
Rana said on November 9, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Crossed your post, Nancy. Sorry!
33 chars
Julie Robinson said on November 9, 2010 at 2:01 pm
It’s creepy that GWB included the episode, and I’m just cynical enough to think it was to distract us all from more substantive discussions of the book and his presidency. He is whoring his mother’s pain.
During her chaplaincy, our daughter was asked to baptize a fetus who had died about 6 months into the pregnancy. I’m not sure about Catholics, but most faiths don’t believe you actually can baptize someone who is already dead. She went along with it at the request of the parents, for whom it was reassuring and healing. Her thinking, which I agree with, is that it was an important ministry to two very grieving people, and theology be damned.
656 chars
LAMary said on November 9, 2010 at 2:13 pm
“I’m not sure about Catholics, but most faiths don’t believe you actually can baptize someone who is already dead.”
Any Mormons here? They baptize people who have been dead for centuries. They baptize their ancestors who weren’t Mormons and they baptize folks like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson who were actually dead before the Mormons existed.
367 chars
nancy said on November 9, 2010 at 2:14 pm
One of my former neighbors just posted photos of his Halloween costume: A large gift-wrapped box, his hairy bare legs sticking out at the bottom, with a large tag: From GOD To WOMEN.
My old neighborhood is a thousand times more fun than the one I’m in now.
Julie, your daughter obviously has what it takes. I’m reminded of a Catholic friend of mine who told his daughters, who were grieving the family’s recently euthanized cat, that their mother was wrong to tell them they’d all meet again in heaven. Animals lack immortal souls, he told them. Oddly, they did not find this comforting.
594 chars
Little Bird said on November 9, 2010 at 2:17 pm
My science teacher saved and displayed in class the placentas from all three of his children. In jars. It was very very gross.
Sorry Nancy.
142 chars
Dexter said on November 9, 2010 at 2:18 pm
I bet BrianStouder remembers when Barbara Bush came to The Fort about 9, 10 years ago to present an award to a smart student. My work-buddy Lori is the mom of that kid who was honored. During the prelims when Bush was sitting next to Lori on those uncomfortable chairs, she was wise-cracking and telling jokes and Lori said she was laughing so hard it was hard to remain dignified there in front of the high brows at this event. Lori left with a high opinion of the First Mother of the USA.
Ah, but last night the jar story was new to me…I was shocked. But then I instantly came out of it when I suddenly realized that the wackiness of that clan was not restricted to the father’s side. Damn.
Yes, I watched it from start to finish. Bush admitted mistakes and talked about how he just quit booze cold turkey. Of course, anyone who reads couldn’t have missed all the allegations of cocaine abuse by 43, but Lauer stayed away from that. People have told me what a rube I am to doubt that maybe 43 Bush never did cocaine, but…have any of you seen or heard of proof other than gossip?
Leaving Rummy in charge of Defense so long, WMD, all his crucial errors of judgment, none of this bothers young Bush. But goddam that son of a bitch, Kanye West for calling George Bush 43 a racist. Why he singled out West as a personal lightning rod is beyond me. Bush had a million haters, why single out Kanye West? And the strange saga continues.
1451 chars
Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 9, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Thank you, Dorothy; I wanted to say something but it wasn’t me that had the miscarriages. They don’t lend themselves to clear thinking, at eight weeks or barely along.
I’ve had, as a pastor, families who wanted a home prayer memorial with me present, burial services, or no mention at all as if it never happened after we left the hospital, and those three at any number of points, even the third option when the stillbirth was pushing eight months. My feeling is that you answer only the questions you’re asked and you do, pastorally, what the family requests. I might have thought myself that a private memorial of some sort for the eight month child, or no mention at all for the not-even-a-month miscarriage would be the reasonable response, but that’s not always where families are at, for any number of reasons. You follow their lead, care for their need, and be as present as you can be.
Baptizing a recently deceased fetus is doubly non-coherent in my tradition’s theology (we’re “believer’s baptism” by history & tradition), but I’ve done it twice. The time to discuss theology is not in a curtained alcove of the L&D suite. We can talk about what it meant and how that sacrament works another time, and I’ll rely on either pastoral discretion, or plain old grace to explain my actions later, whether to church officials or at the Throne itself. Not that worried about either.
1404 chars
Dorothy said on November 9, 2010 at 2:20 pm
If I can’t be with Bingo, Dublin, Peanut, Atticus, Domino, Augie, Gracie, Frankie, Husky, Lucy and whoever comes after them, I don’t want to go to heaven. Or wherever.
168 chars
LAMary said on November 9, 2010 at 2:26 pm
I think I’ve said it before so forgive me. When our great smart cat Edith died at age 22 someone said she was a cat angel now, and my younger son said no, she’s a cat goddess now. If you knew Edith you would agree, and for a fairly young kid, my son showed a nice bit of understanding not only about Edith’s personality but the difference between an angel and a goddess.
370 chars
coozledad said on November 9, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Miss Lindsey and his fellow spontaneous abortions need to just shut up. Particularly after Iran’s nascent democratization was strangled by Bush and his crew of Sovietologist-once-removed clowns. Haven’t they had a bellyfull of blood already?
Abu Aardvark over at Foreign Policy is pretty good on this- at the very least an airstrike will cause a spike in energy prices that will finish the economic landscaping job the Republicans started. This is why you have to bust your ass to keep Republicans, and South Carolinians in particular, away from the levers of power.
567 chars
brian stouder said on November 9, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Well, Dex – when Bar came to Fort Wayne 20-odd years ago, my lovely wife (who wasn’t my wife yet) was working at the downtown senior citizens center, and met her, and was quite impressed with her(which is saying something!)
230 chars
Mark P. said on November 9, 2010 at 2:45 pm
One of the only things Billy Graham ever said that I agreed with was that if it was necessary for a pet to be in heaven in order for someone to be happy, then the pet would be there. I personally believe that the only place my pets live now is beside my father in my memory. One day I will join them, and I hope someone remembers me, my father and my pets so I can be with them for a while.
390 chars
coozledad said on November 9, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Screw heaven. Especially if any of my relatives are there. They’ve all told me they will be, and I’d rather take a pitchfork to the guts than see any of them again.
Actually, It’d be like that Buddy Ebsen episode of the Twilight Zone, but I wouldn’t need my dog to tell me I was at the gates of hell. As soon as I saw my Aunt Vera hauling a foil covered potluck dish of mutually assured diarrhea, I think I’d know what was up.
427 chars
prospero said on November 9, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Dorothy, there’s a fine episode of The Twilight Zone called The Hunt about this subject Written by Earl Hamner of Walton’s Mountain.
266 chars
coozledad said on November 9, 2010 at 3:10 pm
I hate to belabor this, but it isn’t the first time. A friend and former coworker of mine, raised Seventh Day Adventist, realized he was gay, lapsed, then became an Episcopalian or Methodist, told me that in his reading of the Bible, heaven would be populated solely by Jesus and some five hundred male angels of Hebrew extraction.
Buff, winged Hebrews, that is.
364 chars
Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 9, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Circumcised, too.
17 chars
Scout said on November 9, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Ok, first must acknowledge this from cooz, “…I wouldn’t need my dog to tell me I was at the gates of hell. As soon as I saw my Aunt Vera hauling a foil covered potluck dish of mutually assured diarrhea, I think I’d know what was up.” Thanks for that. My monitor needed cleaning anyway.
Assuming lunch is about over in Nancy’s time zone, my comment about the fetus in the jar is that even if Babs was not thinking straight when she showed it to Junior, what kind of judgment is she showing now by agreeing to let him tell the story, lo, these many years later? That is almost freakier than the original weirdness. Given George’s passive-aggressive displays regarding his parents in the past, it wouldn’t surprise me if she did not in fact give permission for this insane little vignette to be told. And what can she say now that it’s out there? She just has to play along while George chuckles under his breath in that Dastardly and Muttley way he does, doesn’t she.
983 chars
Dexter said on November 9, 2010 at 5:33 pm
brian stouder: must have been the same time frame…I’m usually good with placing events in the year they occurred, but I must have missed the mark on the B.Bush visit to the Fort. Well…maybe not…I grabbed this from the February 19, 2010 issue of the Fort Wayne N.S. “In 1999, former first lady Barbara Bush accepted an invitation to be keynote speaker for the Study Connection, …”
Yep, this was the visit I remembered.
Wow, this was a fantastic day. I got two bike rides in. Too many automobiles on the roadways, though. Everybody was out raking, blowing leaves, doing something outside, or driving somewhere. Tomorrow and Thursday , better yet.
Didjas hear about the big lottery winner in Michigan? As the man says here, “I wish I’d a had got it.” Me, too, bro. Me too. 🙁
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/40073592#40073592
856 chars
Deborah said on November 9, 2010 at 7:26 pm
Not to belabor the story but I told my husband about the Barbara Bush mayo jar fetus story and his response was that it sounded like trailer trash, not something that would happen to a high bred family that already had US Senators in it. Granted Midland, Texas may have been a bit of a backwater, but these people had serious money.
332 chars
Jolene said on November 9, 2010 at 7:45 pm
I saw only excerpts of the GWB interview, but I think he said clearly why he put the miscarriage incident in the book. Its purpose, he said, was to show the development of trust between himself and his mother. His reaction was that she was treating him as an adult by calling on him in a moment of crisis, and he was proud to be trusted to help her handle a grown-up problem. He also said, specifically, that he didn’t include that story in his book to show the development of a pro-life perspective, but to show the development of his relationship w/ his mother.
So, yeah, it’s kind of icky, but I don’t think there’s anything crazy or weird here. And, yes, she did, in fact, give permission for him to tell this story, and he said that if she hadn’t agreed he wouldn’t have included it. My first reaction, on hearing this, was that Barbara thought she should take the fetal tissue to the hospital for examination. Nobody has a fetal tissue container in their house. What’s likely to be at hand is a glass jar.
1021 chars
Jolene said on November 9, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Dorothy, that Don Draper video is a kick. Jon Hamm gets a lot of dramatic mileage out of his one-word utterances.
114 chars
moe99 said on November 9, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Found the anecdote I remembered. Now, mind you, GWB maintains that the reason he put the fetus in the jar story in his autobiography was to show how he became closer to his mother. Really? What about the 20+ years afterwards, drinking, drugging and getting his girlfriend a Mexican abortion?
He claims that it brough he and his mom closer together but frankly that’s a lie. He was drunk and a troublemaker for more than 20 years after that, and if rumor is correct, at least one girlfriend went to Mexico for an abortion.
This story, to me, is illustrative of what his real relationship with his mother was post-miscarriage:
Around the same time, for the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. “He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn’t get past,” Allison recalled. “He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too.”
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/02/allison
1389 chars
Deborah said on November 9, 2010 at 8:33 pm
OK Dorothy I just watched the Don Draper “what” video and WOW that was cool. How many ways can you say that one word? Pretty good acting I’d say. And it’s the perfect word for him to repeat. His character is all about the puzzle of life, isn’t it? The second perfect word for him to repeat is “who?” relating to his identity crisis.
332 chars
Jolene said on November 9, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Check out Hillary charming the Australians.
115 chars
kayak woman said on November 9, 2010 at 8:52 pm
First, I have two children but I have never had a miscarriage and my heart goes out to anyone who has.
Maybe someone else besides me caught (from the linked article) that Barbara Bush believes (or did in 1992 anyway) that abortion was a personal issue that did not belong in any political party’s platform. I actually remember her saying that. So, Barbara had a scary miscarriage but still believed in choice many years later but her son changed his views based on being shown a miscarried baby in a jar. It’s late (for me) and I’ve had a bit o’ whine but one or two or three or ten things about all of this don’t quite add up. But who knows. (I am pro-choice but I see the issue in RGB rather than black and white, just to keep things honest.)
748 chars
Dorothy said on November 9, 2010 at 10:12 pm
Jolene thanks so much for that link to the Hillary Clinton interview. I’ve posted it in my Facebook profile, it was so enjoyable to watch!
Kayak Woman you hit the nail on the head about every angle of that miscarriage story. Wish I had said it as clearly as you did.
Deborah – after I watched the “what” video I saw links to some other Mad Men clips. I watched the one about smoking and it was even more fabulous than the What video!
446 chars
A. Riley said on November 9, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Years ago I copyedited a book on pastoral care at the time of death for a Catholic publisher, and the official ruling is that baptism, “last rites,” etc., are for the living, not the dead. But if there’s one thing I learned in all those years of working for a Catholic publisher, it’s that there’s always pastoral discretion.
325 chars
joodyb said on November 9, 2010 at 10:50 pm
what Kayak Woman said. the whole stupid story sounds apocryphal and i would really like it if Bar would take the high road publicly just this once and say if she really believes in personal choice. because all i can think about his use of such a story in a book AFTER his presidency is that it is lurid for lurid’s sake and he just didn’t have anything more interesting to talk about on tv. and the business of going off on Kanye, like he’s jealous of the people who get to be TMZ fodder every night. this man was the POTUS.
oh, and i did spit-takes at nos. 46 and 52.
570 chars
MichaelG said on November 9, 2010 at 11:13 pm
I saw some of the Lauer – W interview here and there on the tube. Well, I guess it’s not a tube any more. I saw it on the flat. That doesn’t work either. Anyway, I saw it. Some of it. The part about the waterboarding was instructive. W ordered it. The lawyers said it was OK. What’s the problem? It’s just that there seemed to be no thinking about the process, what it represented, mostly a fishing expedition with Mohamed Cagada or whatever his or their names were. No thought of where it took Bush or the U.S. in the moral realm, what international reactions would be, of whether it would really gain any useful intelligence, no thought or introspection or consideration of anything. “Un, oh, sure. Go ahead.” I’m just taken by the sheer, empty, vapid stupidity of the whole thing.
Mom with bro in a bottle? I have no idea of what to think or to say. I think I’ll leave that one.
Purfuckt potluck, Cooz. I still have tears in my eyes. Truly, the imagination in your writing is fabulous.
Mary, I had an excellent corned beef sandwich for lunch at Billy’s in Glendale today after very good asparagus chicken for dinner last night at Somethingorother 88, a white table cloth Chinese restaurant on San Fernando Blvd. in Burbank. The waitresses at Billy’s can be a tad aggressive but I was happy.
1320 chars
MaryRC said on November 10, 2010 at 3:53 am
There are stories about Barbara Bush and her sharp tongue but I’ve always been inclined to cut her some slack. I can see the fetus in a jar incident happening while she was distraught, and it’s reflective of the state of her marriage that George Jr. was her confidant, since George Sr. was seldom around.
She had a lot to put up with, pretty much summed up by this article: growing up a plain girl with a beautiful mother who neglected her, looking matronly before her years (she looked older than George Sr.), pushed aside by George Sr.’s long-time mistress Jennifer Fitzgerald, snubbed by Nancy Reagan during the VP years, going through a miscarriage and the death of another child, sometimes suicidal and depressed. No wonder her personality was a bit prickly.
855 chars
Jolene said on November 10, 2010 at 6:47 am
Marjorie Williams, who wrote for Vanity Fair and the Post, also wrote a profile of Barbara Bush that is, I think, quite insightful and also beautifully written. It was published in August of 1992, just before her public role was abruptly terminated.
Don’t know if I’ve mentioned Williams here before, but she was terrific. She died, unfortunately, of liver cancer at 47, but left some terrific work behind. Her husband, Tim Noah, who writes for Slate, has compiled her magazine and feature articles into two collections, both of which I recommend.
818 chars
Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 10, 2010 at 8:02 am
May I thank, generally, the readers here at NN.C, of which two, maybe three have made donations to the work of the homelessness program I help direct? I am really, truly touched by your interest and concern for this oddly named little corner of the Midwest. The events we put together yesterday to keep an annual public face on homelessness are nicely summarized here:
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/article/20101110/NEWS01/11100306/Shoes-on-the-Square-shines-light-on-homelessness
Again, thanks to those who donated in the last few days and/or prayed with us in the work we prepared. It’s good to know just how far the circle of compassion and care can extend.
667 chars
ROgirl said on November 10, 2010 at 8:30 am
The fetus in a jar story sounds like some anti-abortion parable. Very hard to believe the uber-Wasp Babs did such a thing, although it sounds like her relationship with W was strong on the humiliation/hostility end of the spectrum.
231 chars
4dbirds said on November 10, 2010 at 9:36 am
I too always gave Babs a little room because she went through the death of a child to leukemia. I almost lost a child to leukemia and those years were awful. I walked around with a constant knot in my stomach and a quiet panic that I didn’t dare voice else my husband would totally lose it. My child lived, I don’t know what I would be like if my child died. Babs is a mean, spiteful woman and she has a hard time hiding it. Lets just say “I understand”.
459 chars
LAMary said on November 10, 2010 at 11:13 am
I seem to recall Bush 1 being pro-choice until Reagan asked him to be his running mate so it’s no surprise that Barb is. How W became a right to lifer from that odd incident with his mother is baffling, but then again, his reasoning a quite a few things is baffling.
266 chars
beb said on November 10, 2010 at 12:46 pm
I don’t know why anyone would want to cut Barbara Bush any slack. She didn’t exactly have any kind words for the people forced into homelessness by Katrina.
156 chars
prospero said on November 10, 2010 at 10:57 pm
Barbra Bush seemed to think people in the Superdome were sucking of the gobernment teat. It never ocurred to her that all those aholes in AAlaska were getting $1.84 back for every 1.00,Rugged individualism. Bigtime suck while these assholes make out to be rugged. What a bunch of ear-mark wusses that pretend to live by field dressing moron ruminznts that have not got a clue about avoiding humans that shoot them from helicopters. The woman is a lying sack of shit, she looks rode hard and put up wet, and anybody that doesn’t think she’s full of shit is an idiot, and she is scary looking,
592 chars
prospero said on November 10, 2010 at 11:58 pm
Bar thinks she can make her pointy=headed little shit acceptable. John Yoo and that wierdo with the badmoustache. These people are criminals. Yoo is a criminal and so’s Bolton, and Netanyahu can say nbything he wants about parts of Jerusalem. He’s lying and israel just ignores internaational law. Jimma Earl is right and these people practice the exact homeland bullshit as the worst of the DeKlerks, and it is most assuredly aphartheid. How does anybody claim they don’t know what’s going on? E’z Bantustans jacked up by bulldozing homeland. Sorry but everything the Israeli state claims was done to them, they do this to Palestinians. There is no way of getting around this. It’s a pogrom. How does a reasonable person see it as anything else?
Why should reasonable people accept Israel’s expansionist policies as anything but expansionist. They stole nukes from the US with the help of the separartists in South Africa and built them at Dimona? Israel spies actively on the US. That government steals nuclear secrets, all the time. And whack-job American politicians think we should attack Iran? Iran is scared as shit of Israel, and Israel behaves like a rogue state with nukes. Let the IAEE look into Dimona. That is a government that’s barely sane sitting on nukes. Fucking nuts.
Nobody thinks Iran or Syria has any nuclear weapons capability. Nada. Zip. Israel does, and they won’t even admit they do. Where does anybody with the slightest common sense think some threat lies? The military-industrial complex in Israel stole fissionable material and nuke technology from the US. Netanyahu says that destroying age-old Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem to build settler condos isn’t aggression. It’s a grotesque thumb in the eye of international law. No way of getting around this. Criminal bastards, and they get away with it. It is fucking illegal. The Israeli government doan give a shit. They do whatever illegal shit they feel like, and they get away with it.
God did not say that Israel should use it’s millions in military aid from the US to steal fissionable material from the US. That government is just a bunch of perfidious bastards that will steal this country blind.
2202 chars
prospero said on November 11, 2010 at 1:58 am
And the off-the-beaten-track. When I was a little kid, my dad did pediatrics at a hospital in Turkey Creek, KY. Funded by Kaiser-Permanente to provide care for miners that had been pretty much replaced by machines. The miners disliked free care, so thry showed up t our house with produce Nd dressed hogs. They knew my dad could have been mzking cszh hNx over foot in private practice in Memphis or whatever. W.Va was dry, so the sherriff would come by about once a week with confiscted beer.
Across a very scary suspension bridge was Williamson, that had an Elks Club and was sort of a city. This might as well not have been America, it was so immersed in abject poverty. SAt the time, my mom and dad believed in this sort of thing because they believed in Eisenhower and,then, more, in Jack Kennedy. They believed that being a citizen meant you took care of fellow Americans. There is no conceivable possibility you ever stumbled across such abject poverty straying from the Interstate, but there was a moral imperative in play then that has been murdered by crap like Blankenship buying the KY judiciary nowadays. .
We lived in a bucolic holler. Today, that holler has been filled in with tailings from topping the mountains. The Tug River, that ran behind our house and flooded us out one time, well, now it’s choked with mountaintop mining sludge. Lord knows what sort of damage has been done in the name of Massey profits to the Eastern Seaboard aquifer.
It’s my firm belief that if there is one thing the Founding Fathers believed in that was Christian, it was the principle that we take care of each other in hard times. I believe that’s a hallmark of every organized religion, and I believe that’s the guiding principle of every moral, worthwhile human being, religion or no. Profit as an end and a goal, to the long-term extent of solidifying wealth in the hands of very few while marginalizing vast numbers of people, well, that;s Republican dogma while these Plutocrats convince the victimized to do their dirty work for them.
Is this a country that wants to make health care a privilege of the better off. Pretty soon, the better off will be the less better off and they will be outside looking in. Teabaggers are sure we’re headed down some Socalist rabbit hole to hell. Is it possible these folks are so stupid they don’t understand their Medicare and Social Security are socialism that works, in action? Seriously, keep your government hands off my Medicare. WTF? And these idiots prefer $1.3 billion deficits that acted like Halliburton didn’t steal pallets of taxpayers money and like the invasions didn’t cost a $trillion or two, to grownups inclluding the war costs.
The stupidity is mind-boggling, but these people are listening to the pointy-headed little twit trying to claim there were WMDs after all. Get’s right down to it, Ah Mary. W turned a mjor surplus into a $1.3 trillion deficit and he never, I repeat, NEvER accounted for the invasions and occupations in z budget. Cheney sure made cash. So did W. They also sold moral certitude to never be restored, Torture for no intelligence return. ou have to beieve they just did it because they were macho-man chickenhawks that were trying to be macho when they were actually just small-balls chickenhawk drft-dodgers that hid behind the incredibly cowardly swiftboat shit. Jesus, you morons, Kerry ran the boat up the MeKong, W was too coked up to protect Tejas, and Cheney, well he had other priorities.
I think, when it comes down to it, you can just expect Republicans to lie and misrepresent the honest records of their opponents. Seriously, in the face of W’s cocainne-addled draft dodging, why wouldn’t you buy the Swiftboat horseshit, and why would you ignore Ken Blackwell hijacking two counties in Ohio? You believe Cheney had legitimate deferrments and grew up to enrich himself by letting Halliburton walk off with pallets of cash.
Fact is, people buy Republican schemes to get rich quick while they are increasingly marginalized and have their modest wealth transferred to really rich people. Fucking morons.
I understand greed as motivation. Teabaggers in general are being played for idiots by master Cons like DeLay, Armey andMcConnell. The Koch Brothers. Do these idiots think they will ever see a dime?
4326 chars