We don’t know either David, but try harder, ok?
David “The Lion’s Share” Frum comments on the Kitty Kelley allegations:
According to her, the current President Bush snorted coke at Camp David during his father?s presidency. Now if somebody produced a claim that Bush experimented with cocaine in 1974 or 1975, before his 30th birthday and his marriage, before his break with alcohol and his religious conversion, I?d say that the charge was very unlikely, but maybe not absolutely impossible. But to say that he did it at Camp David between 1989 and 1993, when he was in his mid-40s, married, in the midst of his greatest business success, and on the verge of running for the governorship of Texas–a time when all his friends attest that he had quit drinking and was engaged in regular and intense Bible study–well that’s kind of nuts isn’t it?
Ignore, if you can, the casual ease with which Frum brushes off the possibility of a Bush “youthful indiscretion.” The guy “experimented” coke — who the fuck cares, he wasn’t even 30 yet! Is it called “experimenting” when a rich white guy does it, but “possession with intent to sale” when a poor black man does? (Don’t answer that!)
In any case — the point we meant to add was this: What is really nuts is suggesting that only single losers under 40 years of age with no job, no prospects and no money “experiment” with cocaine. Even people who believe in God do drugs — and if your defense of the charge is to pull up the deader than a dead horse Chewbacca Defense, you’ve effectively conceded the game. Just to drive the point home:
Lawrence Kudlow, the conservative Ivy-educated son of a rich New Jersey businessman, once served as chief economist for the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan administration. Later, he earned $1 million a year at the investment house of Bear Stearns. He was also a cocaine addict who checked into the Hazelden clinic in 1995, after he blacked out and his third wife threatened to divorce him.
Added: James Wolcott adds his thoughts. (Thanks to retardo.)
Seb, see also here:
http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2004/09/one_is_the_lone.php
Wolcott is brutal. I love it.
Not exactly the fabled Chewbacca Defense, but more like the ‘is not’ line of reasoning common to schoolyards in the whole habitable world and Canada.
“Superman is way stronger than Batman!”
“Is not.”
“But everyone knows that Superman…”
“No he isn’t.”
“Look, see, it says here that…”
“No it doesn’t.”
That Frum. Seb, this page needs a no-Frums version.
mcnett: it is too the Chewbacca defense! “Why would a married man experiment with cocaine? It does not make sense!”
Hm, you’re right.
But it also has features of the ‘that’s different’ line of reasoning.
“Superman has super strength, right?”
“Yeah”
“And Batman doesn’t have any super powers at all.”
“Yeah.”
“So if Superman has super strength, you have to admit he might be stronger than…”
“That’s different.”
I’m more interested in what David Frum means when he mentions Bush’s “greatest business success”. Does he mean it as a euphemism for “least monumental business fuck-up”? Or does he mean that this is the period where Bush did his most lucrative insider trading?
Strictly, his dad getting elected president does qualify as his greatest business success.
But Frum probably means… Never mind, I think about things like Frum and my head starts to beep in that pre-exploding way.
Nothing — he means nothing. It was Bush’s greatest act of heroism on the battlefield, his greatest symphony, his most miraculous work of science. ‘Business success’ is a euphemism for ‘unspecified good thing that, were I to mention its nature, would de-cloak as a demonstrable flaming fuckup — so I’m just going to toss this phrase in here blithely and scurry onward like the David Frum I am.’
Gah!
“Experimenting”?! Frum, please! The first time one smokes a reefer, or scarfs down a few Xanaxes, or shoots up heroin, or snorts a couple lines of cocaine, the first time one does something like that, you could conceivably call it “experimenting,” meaning an intent to learn something, specifically “what will this stuff do to my head?” But the fifth or twelveth or five-hundredth time one does it, it’s not “experimenting” at all. The word you wanted, Mr. Frum, was “indulging.”
I think it’s still experimenting if you can convince yourself you’re in love.
I guess all those 40 year old coke heads I used to know when I worked on Wall Street were just a figment of my fevered imagination.