The American Spectator

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See Jenna and Barbara.

They are George and Laura’s twin daughters.

Jenna was cited two times for underage drinking.

Barbara was cited only once.

George and Laura shepen nachas from their lovely girls.

br> Here the Yiddish phrase indicates that the parents take proud satisfaction from their children’s behavior. The entire lives of Jenna and Barbara are reduced to their weakest moments of sowing their wild oats. These are not even politicians who might be considered fair game for expounding views that affect our lives. These are two teenagers, and later young adults, who are trying to cope with facing life’s responsibilities in the pitiless glare of the spotlight.

The book then offers us a conversation between George and Brother Jeb. “How is your daughter, Noelle? Is she still addicted to Ex-Lax?” No, Jeb explains, her drug of choice is correctly pronounced Xanax, and she is in therapy. “Therapy schmerapy,” says George. “If someone has troubles they should talk to God.”

The elder Barbara Bush, George’s mother, is introduced as a farbissenah, a crotchety woman. Brother Neil, we are told, was in the savings and loan business. “A lot of people lost money at his bank. They were very sad. Neil made a lot of money at the bank and was very happy.”

The unremitting nastiness continues in this vein, peaking in a scene where Laura Bush finds an abandoned baby. She considers adopting it, but her husband and father-in-law chide her that this will encourage young women to have more children out of wedlock. They decided to abandon the baby to its fate, which they compound by taking away its blanket. Why waste a perfectly good blanket?

This all strikes me as a perfect example of what the Talmud calls: “He came to teach about others and ended up revealing about himself.” A person of decency does not publish personal attacks against a family where no social or political purpose is achieved. Nor does he treat the office of the Presidency so dismissively. The political debate deserves better, as does our literary culture. Even the Yiddish words chosen are of the lowest caliber, used only by people who have no breeding. Indeed this pretense at education is a base exercise: class is dismissed.