A Presidential Visit
by Jeff Haas
Mother Earth was on her deathbed in the hospital when George W. Bush stopped by for a presidential visit.
“Leave me alone with her,” he told his entourage as he closed the door.
Her stringy gray hair was matted and she was missing two front teeth, but to George W. Bush she looked like a sixteen-year-old in her first blush of womanhood.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, taking her arthritic claw in his hands. She would have objected as he leaned down to kiss her on the lips, but the respirator made it impossible for her to speak.
Losing all self-control, George W. Bush became aroused as he removed her oxygen tube and probed her sore-pocked mouth with his tongue. Then he lifted her hospital gown up over her hips, revealing a gray-haired mound that only incited him further. Unhooking his belt and pulling his pants down to his knees, he climbed on top of the bed, spread her emaciated legs, and thrust his drill bit deep into her bore hole.
When he was done, George W. Bush zipped up his pants and buckled his belt, feeling more powerful than ever. Mother Earth lay dead on the bed, but to him she was just sleeping after a torrid session of lovemaking. Kissing the cadaver on the forehead, he walked to the door and opened it for his entourage.
“Next,” he said.
May 22nd, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
May 23rd, 2006 at 7:01 pm
sorry, jeff, just don’t get it. explain it to me in words I can understand.
what’s the market for this?
I’ve heard you know all about the market place.
May 24th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Here’s the market.
May 24th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
ha ha ha
May 24th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
oh jeffrey…
May 26th, 2006 at 11:59 am
At some point, I’m hoping someone’s actually going to tell me what they think of the story — good or bad. As it is, working from limited information, I have to assume it’s working.
May 27th, 2006 at 10:36 am
oh jeff, a love story. how quaint. really though, how genius.
s.
May 28th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
Thanks, Sabrina, though “genius” might be a little strong. However, if you insist…
May 29th, 2006 at 7:53 am
I’m more interested to know about jeff’s sex life…
May 29th, 2006 at 10:11 am
Me, too.
July 20th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
REVIEW:
Although the sentences are well constructed, the story as a whole lacks conflict, a central question and believable characters. It appears to rely on shock value.
This piece is anti-Bush, yet I wonder to what end. To simply vent frustration? To get people to care about the environment? To get people to vote against the G.O.P.? Is it a waving of a red flag - trying to inspire outrage for or against Bush? Or just a writing experiment?
In my opinion, this piece is deadly on all counts. If it was written as anything other than a rant to express breathtaking hostility against the person of George Bush, it fails.
Don’t get me wrong - expressing frustration and hostility can be galvanizing. An angry call to action can create change. But this piece doesn’t do that for me. In my opinion, it actually does the opposite.
Anyone who loves Mother Earth must cringe while reading this piece. I must ask: whom is the writer trying to hurt? Bush or those who love the earth?
I dare say that the story must hurt the tender hearted and the nature lover, must rake the enraged further. I believe it just further hurts those of us who are aware of the stakes, without offering anything in return.
If the story means to prod us into pro-environment action, it gives us no reason to do so.
It never identifies what the average individual can do to save Mother Earth. It only makes Bush the scapegoat and depicts the entire cause as already lost.
Better to create a story that contains conflict and a question, a situation where average people hear an old woman being attacked in a street and must decide whether or not they will come to her aid.
Instead of giving the story away from the get-go, it would be more compelling to create a mystery and reveal at the end (as a group of concerned neighbors unmask the attacker) that the old, frail woman is Mother Earth and the rapist is Bush and that they - neighbors working together - have rescued her. That might be more effective in terms of engaging the reader.
As it stands, this seems an expression of despondent, impotent rage and is sure to alienate those who read it (even those who despise Bush) by turning the raping of Mother Earth either into political outrage or a dirty joke.
Neither of these results is likely to change the minds of those who persist in denying Global Warming or support drilling in the Arctic.
There is also one other point. Is it realistic to believe that a rapist sees his 80-year-old victim as a young girl with a blush?
I don’t think so. Not unless the person is psychotic.
This was added, I’m guessing, to show how out of touch Bush is with reality. It would be better - and more effective - to show that he knows exactly what he’s doing.
Unfortunately - and here’s more political commentary - people cut Bush a lot of slack - and laugh at him - because he’s obviously so unaware of the consequences of his actions.
As a result he’s become a clown, a fool, a stuttering and blank-eyed idiot who can’t pronounce simple words. He’s someone about whom people just shake their heads and say: that’s Bush, he’s an idiot, he’s out of touch, he just doesn’t get it.
Consequently he has avoided all responsibility. He’s become immensely slippery. Nothing sticks. It’s like trying to hold the village idiot responsible for playing with matches and burning down the firehouse.
But Bush is not an idiot. And he should be held accountable.
Last point: Jimmy Carter tried to get Americans to conserve and reject war as an alternative in the 1970’s.
Admittedly, the Fed probably manipulated interest rates to make him look like an idiot and assure he was not re-elected, but Americans hated him and voted him out.
American have overwhelmingly chose using energy and upsizing (as well as national aggression) over conservation and downsizing. Bush is simply reflecting, in spades, choices we have made as a collective.
As Pogo said: I have seen the enemy and he is me. Bush is only the symptom of an entire country that has been on the wrong track for a long time, with our complicit or explicit approval. As long as he is the scapegoat, we don’t have to change.
Disclosure: I voted against Bush twice. I believe he will be judged as the worst leader in U.S. history. His impact on the U.S. and the world is devastating. I am aware that he has silently rolled back 80% of U.S. environmental protection laws and also agree that he is flagrantly raping Mother Earth.
FYI, I was told by a member at Zoetrope that reviews of stories are needed on this site.
Jeff Haas appears to be calling for an actual review of this piece: At some point, I’m hoping someone’s actually going to tell me what they think of the story — good or bad. As it is, working from limited information, I have to assume it’s working.
Yet, though I posted a review a few days ago, explaining in depth why this story does not work for me, my post didn’t show up. I find it hard to believe, considering the nature of the piece itself, that my critique was too blunt. I’m wondering if it was deleted because I put what I thought was a relevant URL about a way to save energy in my post.
Therefore, I am posting my review again, sans URL. If it still doesn’t show up, then I won’t try again, nor will I read or critique any more pieces on this site.
July 22nd, 2006 at 12:32 am
Thanks for your comments, Clyo. I’m encouraged that you felt compelled to write a 960-word review for a 231-word story, even if you didn’t like it. Perhaps I hit an aesthetic nerve if not a political one.
I think your argument is valid in that the point of satire is to provoke a change in the reader, not just to give the writer a chance to vent frustation. In my defense, I’ll say that it’s difficult for a satirist to find precisely the right tone, and I use these flashes to experiment. The tone here is intentionally abrasive to express my outrage at being represented by a President I find morally reprehensible, to “shout at the hard of hearing” and “draw large and startling figures for the almost-blind,” to paraphrase Flannery O’Connor.
Obviously, that tone didn’t work for you.
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:32 am
In other words:
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot - I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad.
–Howard Beale, Network
August 8th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
I guess I won this argument by default. Hooray for me!
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:21 pm
Hi Jeff,
Time flies. I’ve been busy, but I’m finally checking back now.
I think the people who will be made angry by this piece will be those who are pro-Bush, and the anger will work against your cause, not for it.
I also think many who are rabidly against Bush are biting their tales in frustration, unable to unite, so full of bile they can’t see straight. (Disclosure: I’ve been one.)
They may laugh and say: “Yeah, that’s good - go get him” but it’s with a cynical meanspiritedness, not the kind of inner landscape of tolerance, patience, determination and insistence upon following higher ideals that we need to call upon, within ourselves, if we intend to turn things around.
Therefore, the story still doesn’t work as a vehicle for change, in my opinion, but only as venting for the author.
So I can only ask you: did it work? Do you feel better?
I hope so, because reading the story didn’t make me feel better nor give me any hope. To me, it a depressing symptom of the dismal feelings of powerlessness that pervade the nation’s offended. (When we feel powerless, it is then that we hate best, we smear and lash out best.)
This is no insult against you, Jeff, as a writer or a thinker, in case I’ve come off too harsh. You are simply doing what good writers do: reflect their times and the mentality of the collective. But what this story says about these times - and about us - is just horrendous.
Clyo
August 26th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Well, it made me feel better at the time, but what would really make me feel better is if the Democrats take back the Congress in November. I admit to a feeling of powerlessness, however. I’m doing my part by voting every chance I get and contributing to various campaigns, but I can’t seem to escape this feeling of doom for the nation and humanity in general. Sometime I wonder if the world is really in as bad shape as I think it is, or if I’m projecting my own psychological state on the world. Either way, there’s no guarantee that humanity will survive this century, and wishing it away doesn’t help. What if humanity is actually on the brink of destroying itself and there’s not a blessed thing we can do about it? What if the tipping point has already been reached? What kind of art would be appropriate under those circumstances? Perhaps no art at all.
Unfortunately, I’m a pessimist.
February 28th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Jeff-This piece was revolting, visually explicit, and above all, excellent. Inneventive satire-yeah, Jeff! Nonnie
August 16th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Thanks, Nonnie!
August 16th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
If you edit this and replace all occurrences of “George Bush” substituting the words “Bill Clinton,” it would be much more realistic and therefore it might become humorous.
August 18th, 2007 at 10:42 am
What if I replace the word “entourage” with “Karl Rove”?
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