The ALA’s opinion of Bush ought to make staffing it a fun prospect…

I grew up not too far from the Reagan Presidential Library.  Sigh. This is just another “library” I’m going to avoid in the future when I visit family in Dallas.

I’m sure he’ll make up the money when he gets out of office and starts calling in favors, so unfortunately this setback is nothing more than a setback.

I’ll be curious to find out.  A lot of the moneycons have lost a crapload of money in the past few months, and they’re not any happier about it than the rest of us.  W may have committed the ultimate sin:  losing money.

I still laugh at the fact he can’t get his autobiography published, while Bill Clinton made millions off of his and had publishers falling over to sign him.

How much space do you need for three comic books?

Poor Mr. President Bush, I fear that he will be pelted with shoes wherever he goes now, by traitors who don’t see the good in war…G*dspeed, George Willard Bush!

The ALA’s opinion of Bush ought to make staffing it a fun prospect…

What, credentialed experts who are competent at their job? That’s for the “reality-based community.”

No, the staff should match his glorious legacy. That means they’ll just hire mailroom staff from the Heritage Foundation and graduates of the “Liberry Science” departments of schools like the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (which hires such “distinguished professors” as Mary Kassian).

I’m so pleased to hear they’re having such a hard time raising funds for this travesty. Between that, the mass refusal of world leaders to shake his hand at the economic summit, and the shoe-throwing incident, I hope Prince Bush will see his unique place in American history: the only modern ex-President to be more reviled than Nixon.

Can we start forgetting about him yet?

Not while there is even the slightest chance of making him or anyone in his administration pay for his crimes, no. I don’t think we should.

The good news about Bush’s planned presidential library is that it’s going to be polluting Dallas and not Austin.

I remember about 2004, on a flight to Mexico, I had a stop-over in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. I walked past a life-sized statue of George W. Bush in the hall. I thought that was wierd and even a bit frightening. I’ve never seen life-sized statues of other presidents in airports, and I wondered if this was the beginning of some kind of cult.

’ve never seen life-sized statues of other presidents in airports

I saw one of Jefferson, but he’s been dead for over 250+ years so it’s not as creepy.

Er, 150+ years.

safe from eggs and people flinging burned-out joints at it

Ah, but do they have shoes at SMU?

I would encourage people to donate a pair of shoes to charity…do it in the name of George Bush…and send the Bush Library the receipt.

Given that amount of paper work an administration generates and the amount of data for future historians, the idea of presidential libraries make sense.  Having them run by basically sycophantic foundations whose funds are raised directed by the President makes no sense.  They’ve turned into monuments.

Also keep in mind that one of Bush’s first acts was to reclassify a whole bunch of stuff about his father’s administration to keep it from getting out, so yeah this will be about as honest as the Creation Museum.

yeah, Ben D., it was the fact that he was still president and they were building statues. Seemed a bit Baathist to me.

Apparently there’s an old Bob Hope gag about Spiro Agnew that could be repurposed here:

Disaster struck recently when a fire broke out in <strike>Spiro Agnew</strike> George W. Bush’s library. Fire Department sources inform us that both books were badly damaged by the fire and the water used to suppress it. Sadly, Mr. <strike>Agnew</strike> Bush had not yet finished coloring one of them in.

Eh, Agnew was an evil motherfucker but wasn’t a complete imbecile like Bush.

I’d argue that the best presidential library is the only one residing in a public library—Coolidge, at Forbes Library in Northampton, MA.  http://www.forbeslibrary.org/coolidge/coolidge.shtml

Given that amount of paper work an administration generates and the amount of data for future historians, the idea of presidential libraries make sense.

But W classified the shit out of everything and has made it nearly impossible to get documents.  He’s ordered his underlings to obstruct and slow down every FOIA request. 

What papers do you think will be there? 

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Dana, there’s no way Obama can come close to matching the colossal bust that has been the Administration of the Worst President Ever.  He’s already making a dramatic difference by putting qualified people in his cabinet and in charge of federal departments.  Our international reputation is already being repaired.

I feel pretty confident in proclaiming that no US cities will be written off under Barry.

For Bush’s Presidential Library, one of those carnival haunted houses would be appropriate.

Obama will look good just by virtue of who preceded him. Hell I’ll take “below average” over what we have now. I’d take fucking Nixon over what we have now!

Caren, you beat me to it.  I’m not sure that library science teaches how to file shredded documents and deleted emails.  “The Pet Goat” likely doesn’t take up much shelf space.

But W classified the shit out of everything and has made it nearly impossible to get documents.  He’s ordered his underlings to obstruct and slow down every FOIA request.

So what you’re saying is that the library will be built by Halliburton and contain row after row of empty shelving that would collapse if you actually put anything on it?

To be more lifelike, shouldn’t the animatronic LBJ pressure you to support him on a key bill while he’s taking a dump?

BTW, I love the Bush fashion dolls.  There’s a whole series of presidential ones—I have the Nixon one at the bottom of a box somewhere.  Mrs. Pesto and I even considered using the dolls to identify tables at our wedding (“Oh, we’re sitting at the Eisenhower table!” where the guests would find a little, paper Ike and Mimi in their undies, with paper clothes for them to wear!).  I don’t remember why we didn’t follow through on that plan…

...if Halliburton does the electrical wiring, it might kill anybody dumb enough to enter…

Not to mention the sewage raining down from the pipes in the ceiling!

MikeEss:

And you will be allowed to fill out comment cards, but only if you walk two miles away to a barbed-wire enclosure so the librarians won’t be disturbed by your presence.

Oh yes, and the librarians will dutifully turn over all records of what the patrons checked out every day to the FBI.

Oh, I’m not holding it against him, Amanda.  The man could definitely be an asshole, but deep down he was a good-hearted asshole (illustrated both by his commitment to civil rights and the war on poverty, and by his despair over Vietnam), as well as a brilliant politician.  And he certainly had his own style.

Copier toner bills will be insane, given how many of the records will be blacked out.

And some mysterious vandal will be leaving copies of The Pet Goat all over the place about once a month.

Another thing about LBJ is that in his last days in office(so I was told by a grade school teacher shortly afterwards) he was working hard since he knew what a mess Vietnam would be for Nixon, so that there would be few, if any, other messes for Nixon to have to deal with.

Compare that to the current resident of the WH, I’m afraid the latter suffers greatly by a noticeable lack “work” or ‘results’ in his last days in office, unless you count the final WH Barney video.

I had a stop-over in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. I walked past a life-sized statue of George W. Bush in the hall.

Drag it into the bathroom so people can pee on it in privacy.

Caren, you beat me to it.  I’m not sure that library science teaches how to file shredded documents and deleted emails.  “The Pet Goat” likely doesn’t take up much shelf space.

On the other hand, classification will be easy.  Most libraries using Dewey tend to have really big 300 series, covering the “social sciences”.  Bush will have at least half of his material classified under 165 - “Fallacies & sources of error”.

paul wrote: So what you’re saying is that the library will be built by Halliburton and contain row after row of empty shelving that would collapse if you actually put anything on it?

LOL! As an affirmation of his conviction that the Iraq War was the bestest thing ever, Bush should have his library built by a Kuwaiti firm contracted by KBR using enslaved Bangladeshis that take his donors’ $250 million, but leave a half-finished building with leaking sewage pipes, rickety stairs, no roof and a mold problem. When the Bush Foundation tries to sue to get their money back, the outfit will point to a little-noticed clause in their contract shielding them from any liability or future claims over the work. In fact, another clause in the contract will force Bush to pay them another $50 million in “overage” charges stemming from a failed attempt to add accessibility ramps to the entry lobby. The head of the construction firm will be owed a $15 million bonus for the job, even though Dallas county inspectors will declare it uninhabitable and taxpayers will be stuck with a $24 million bill to have the eyesore removed and the land at SMU restored to a native prairie reserve. 

It will be a fitting tribute indeed.

Off topic:  can we ban (or otherwise filter) all smileys in comments?  Though it’s nice to have an easy way to identify Dana, the passive-aggressiveness is wearing thin.

I have nothing to contribute to the discussion of the Bush library that hasn’t already been said, but I’d like to point out the sheer tonnage of win that comprises the LBJ animatronic thing in the video Amanda posted.

Oh my god, I HAVE those Bush family fashion cut-outs.

I can’t wait to visit the Barack Obama Presidential Library at the University of Chicago… because duh, of course that’s where it’s going.

The good news about Bush’s planned presidential library is that it’s going to be polluting Dallas and not Austin.

Le Sigh.  Which is why the SMU alumni association will not get a fucking dime from me ever.  (Okay, there are lots of reasons why they won’t, but this is a big damn cherry on top of my Sundae of Resentment.)

However, whether you happen to like a particular president or not, these things contain presidential papers that researchers will use; they serve a real purpose beyond sycophancy.

That’s why we have a Library of Congress, which is supposed to be able to preserve records of our government for our use. It may happen at a presidential library if they’re allowed access to them rather than impeded by sycophantic legacy-polishers the president and his family get to choose to be in charge. The record of the Bush family in this regard is not good. Bush Sr. undermined the Presidential Records Act by making an agreement with the Archivist to give him complete control over his own administration’s records, in return for which the Archivist was put in charge of his presidential library. This was later overturned by a federal judge. Then one of Bush Junior’s first acts upon taking office was to give presidents and their heirs complete veto power over access to their papers, with no restrictions.

So yeah, I’m sure his presidential library will do a fine job of making sure researchers have access to anything embarrassing or potentially incriminating. Just like they have the entire time he’s been in office…

Regarding Southern Methodist University: Hell yes they have shoes at SMU.  They’re way too expensive to be throwing around, though.  And while it is a nominally religious school (and has a school of theology, with the nicest library on campus), SMU’s administration and student body tends to be a good bit more conservative than the actual Methodist church.  Marion Wright Edelman once spoke at graduation; there was much grumbling about having someone speak that nobody ever heard of and couldn’t they get G.H.W. Bush to come back?

You can tell which parking lots are for students and which are for faculty: the student parking lots have way nicer cars in them.  Faculty types have shitty cars.

“So what you’re saying is that the library will be built by Halliburton and contain row after row of empty shelving that would collapse if you actually put anything on it?”

...if Halliburton does the electrical wiring, it might kill anybody dumb enough to enter…

That just made me think of a Monty Python skit where they were interviewing architects for a retirement community, and one of the interviewees goes on to describe his creation - “Here they enter in the front, and then proceed by conveyor belt to rotating knives” or something like that - and when the guy is informed that this is for a retirement community, the guy goes, “Oh?  It’s not a slaughterhouse?”

Because that just sums up the total incompetence and horror of the Bush years.

They have to find someplace to put Ann Coulter’s books and other Reich wing garbage no one actually wants to read.

I can’t wait for his library to be built.  I love Dallas, I love SMU and I love Republicans.  Ya’ll won’t have much to write about when President Bush is gone….will this website fold??