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Interesting story about President Bush. Here’s the gist:

George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled “A Charge to Keep.” Bush was so taken by it, that he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography. And here’s what he says about it:

I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

So in Bush’s view (or perhaps I should say, faith) the key figure, with whom he personally identifies, is a missionary spreading the word of the Methodist Christianity in the American West in the late nineteenth century.

Meanwhile, in the liberally biased land of reality…

Jacob Weisberg has solved the mystery. He invested the time to track down the commission behind the art work and he gives us the full story in his forthcoming book on Bush, The Bush Tragedy:

[Bush] came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

So Bush’s inspiring, proselytizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency. Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious. The president of the United States has identified closely with a man he sees as a mythic, heroic figure. But in fact he’s a wily criminal one step out in front of justice. It perfectly reflects Bush the man. . . and Bush the president.

CBC’s As It Happens has a nice description of the aforementioned song:

There’s music you listen to under a comfy blanket, in your easy chair, with a cup of cocoa. And there’s music you listen to under that same blanket, by candlelight, with a glass of wine.

And then there’s music you listen to after the candle has long sputtered out, under a threadbare blanket, lying on the floor, whispering, “Why? WHY?” And that’s the kind of music you’re listening to right now.

Dunbar’s Number

Asked today at Ask-metafilter: How do you avoid staring down cleavage when somebody bends down to talk to you?

With the conversation of the primaries shifting from national security to the plummeting economy, how will Rudy manage to work 9-11 into the dialog?

Listen to act 3 of this episode of This American Life. (Begins at 41:00).

When asked if he was worried about how badly his campaign’s been doing in the primaries thus far, Giuliani replied:

“None of this worries me - Sept. 11, there were times I was worried.”

Um… What? I guess Joe Biden was right.

˙pǝɹoq ǝɥʇ ɹoɟ ʎǝʞuıl

Don’t have sex with crazy.

PCR music video/ad.