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Tall Tales Trashed 

From the wilds of academe comes the shattering of yet another right wing Barack Obama trope, his frequently complained about tendency to first-person pronounce himself into every occasion.

Except he doesn’t.

So we learn in Ben Zimmer’s New York Times review of social psychologist James W. Pennebaker’s  “The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us.” In fact, “Obama has distinguished himself as the lowest I-word user of any of the modern presidents.”

Actual facts haven’t stopped past trafficers in Obama fashion faux-pas, teleprompter dependence, and furniture abuse tall tales, but although fastener complaints burgeon, we live in hope.

As America marked the 10th anniversary at ground zero with solemn ceremony, and Paul Simon, word comes of an exciting new cashing in on The 9/11 Experience®

Your Barack Obama action figure, standing over the bleeding corpse of Osama Bin Laden.

Make My Presidents Day Â

      Kind of makes Bush’s pistol plaque seem somehow inadequate, doesn’t it?  

Your Presidential Libraries Never Forget 

The world will little remember reaching for the remote, desperate to squelch George Pataki’s insulting reading of the Gettysburg address on the first 9/11 anniversary.

Some feared the vapid inanity of  2002’s commemorations could never be topped, but presidential libraries are doing their part.

Who Am I & Why Am I Here?  

Having apparently run out of things to say about either their nominal subjects or their periods, today’s presidential libraries seek to present themselves as founts of Everyhistory, places to mark any odd occasion with history slapped on.

And try , if possible, to include motorcycles.

At least four presidential libraries will mark the decade since 9/11, each in their own baffling manner.

The Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library is at least in the same state as one target…but after that the relation gets kind of strained.

They will be displaying a chunk of metal from the World Trade Center wreckage.  

We might have enjoyed a retrospective on our relationship with our gallant Saudi Arabian ally, beginning with FDR’s quiet 1945 interlude with King Saud.

 Bush senior’s Library will also feature World Trade Center metal,

and they’ve rounded up some local rescue workers.

No word if Bandar Bush will show up.

 The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum has subcontracted

to the Boy Scouts, who will be hanging about all day.

And yes, they do have a chunk of the World Trade Center.

The Nixon Library will go all out for the memories. Sixteen tons of World Trade Center steel will arrive in ceremony Monday, and be available for public gawking all week. 

Keeping Up With The Kardashian

Tuesday will feature Angie Kardashian, one of the lesser known Kardashians.   Her claim to fame is post-9/11 firehouse cooking, not self-porning.

Let us pray 9/11 souvenirs don’t become the latest presidential library must have object.  At least until they all get their Berlin Wall chunks squared away.

 

  The Reagan Library will be bursting with 9/11 goodness.  The Library will serve as a start point for Simi Valley’s “Freedom Walk,” Donald Rumsfeld‘s effort to mashup the initially popular Afghanistan war together with Iraq in a delightful Freedom Smoothie.

                                                                                                                 Freedom Handshakes? 

The program will feature a 9/11 emergency worker, and they’ve dug up a prize. Out of all the rescue workers on the scene on 9/11, they’ve chosen the Scientologist.

  His “controversial” church got a reputation at the disaster site of proselytizing and sneaking around barricades, but  New York Fireman John McCole was their man on the inside.  

   

 

With her proven record of cult attraction, did the Scientologists get to Nancy Reagan? 

 The Reagan Library never lets a marketing moment pass, as they demonstrated with their 9/11 commemoration page.

 

 You’ll come to honor the dead,  you’ll stay to purchase souvenir Air Force One replicas.

Memories! 

George W. Bush is in a wistful mood as a teaser exhibit for his presidential museum opens in Dallas.

The often weepy former president is out and about flogging his memoirs in advance of sale date, and told a Chicago audience that his greatest regret was not putting across his Social Security “reform.”

As sensible heads said at the time, the Bush plan amounted to sending old folks to slaughter in the market, while the feds borrowed gazillions to cover the gap caused by paying out benefits while dumping current income into Wall Street.

Oh, what might have been!

But we’ll always have Saddam’s gun.

 

Legends Of The Fall

It’s come to this: after being around for 20 years, the Nixon Library’s best spokesman defending the Nixon “legacy” is creationist fraudster and imaginary civil rights veteran Ben Stein.

The  celebration of 20 proud years is in the spirit of the man, with events featuring such 60s legends as Freddie “The Jew Counter” Malek.

The Library spent most of these years with no actual Nixon presidential documents. It’s been a place of song, myth, and wedding rentals,  staffed by the fervent few who still believe Nixon’s vindication will come, someday.

CultureWares.com celebrates Nixon’s Twenty Years Of Lustration.