Former first lady Barbara Bush has decided to end medical treatment... [Update: RIP]

Rachel Maddow just discussed this on her show about an hour ago. It was at Wellesley in 1990.

Does anyone else have a vague (or less vague than my own) recollection that Al Franken mentioned her in his book, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them”? I think that was the one - it certainly wasn’t his most recent book.

Anyway, IF I remember correctly, he happened to sit next to her on an airplane, tried to be nice to her, and she was an absolute bitch to him.

That’s just one data point, of course. She might have been a nice person overall and was just having a bad day, and/or was especially miffed at Democrats due to some issue of the time. I’ve acted badly a few times in my life too; most of us have.

You can hear Al tell the story here, but no, Al was definitely not being nice to her. He was needling her about George Bush and, what looked like then (and now), his ill-suited run for the presidency. Barbara went into dismissive elite mode pretty easily, but I’m not entirely surprised. Some mothers are hyper-protective of their sons.

I remember that now as well. I don’t remember the details, but he thought she was a total bitch. I have no idea what people are really like. The impressions on TV are carefully manufactured, I’m sure.

Lot of hate spilling out over the net about her, one would think Ilsa Koch had just died. Mrs Bush would have been amused.

Sorry about your friend. If it’s any consolation, Snopes suggested that her remarks were not really about the war itself (which hadn’t started at that point), but rather about the media constantly hyping and speculating on the whole thing in the weeks before combat operations actually began:

What is Al Franken’s definition of “trying to be nice?”

The first thing I did when I heard she was dying was google the “beautiful mind” incident. I read the Snopes article.

Snopes gives her the most generous out. Snopes says that journalists of the time were all about speculation and “the cost”.
Snopes said Barb issued these words before the war. I say, “THAT IS WHEN YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT IT!” This useless fool thought that talking about what the costs of war before the was happened was, well, useless. IF YOU ARE CONTEMPLATING KILLING OTHER PEOPLE THE TIME ABOUT TALKING ABOUT IT IS BEFORE THE ACTION. Barb, you stupid, stupid, entitled fool.

I didn’t know they lost a daughter to leukemia.

And like clockwork, the lunatic fringe responds with the usual class.

Regards,
Shodan

I updated the thread title to indicate Barbara Bush’s passing.

I’ve never supported a Republican for anything in my entire life, but she was one of the good ones. RIP.

Just one troll. She by no means speaks for anyone but herself.

Of course Fox News will make a huge deal out of this and imply this is the typical liberal elite belief.

Not sure what the point of this is. I mean, no shit. Same if someone from the left died.

At any rate, I respected her and 41 (the only Republican president in my lifetime that I supported.) Rest in peace.

Indeed.

The first Bush family never seemed all that bad to me, even if the second one was really annoying and politically incompetent. George H.W. Bush and Barbara were together for a really long time and I am sure they loved each other very much. I remember once as a kid, on vacation in Maine, we walked on the beach past the Bush family house in Kennebunkport. My mom yelled (jokingly) “BARBARA!!! GIVE US SOMETHING TO EAT!!!”

What did Maddow have to say? Because I well remember that that First Spouse comment was not random. I’m going to pull something I posted in another forum a while back.

And on further reflection, I still don’t have a problem with being a wife and mother, but I do have a problem with who Barbara Bush was the mother of. If Dubya and Jeb are examples of her finest work, no thank you.

I feel the same way. I don’t remember either of the Carters nor to I remember Laura Bush, but other than the Obamas, the first Bushes were my favorite first family as people.

She also encouraged people to call her and listed her “home number,” which was actually a mental health hotline. So how many people who really needed help couldn’t get through?

Yeah. The context of Babs’ remarks was that her son and his handlers were all over the TV, lying their faces off about how we had to hurry up and attack Iraq right damn now, or there’d be a smoking mushroom cloud, and it would all be so cheap and quick and everyone would love us for it. Meanwhile, anyone who tried to slow their roll was being called a liberal lunatic and a traitor.

She made her remark about the irrelevancy of body bags right before her son issued his ultimatum to Saddam. I don’t understand how the context is supposed to make her look better.