Who Cares What You Think
Via Wonkette, this story in Salon about an encounter that Bill Hangley Jr. had with President Bush. I think my reaction is pretty much the opposite of what the author intended.

It was July 4, 2001, and we were both at one of those things that the late historian Daniel Boorstin would have labeled a "pseudo event": a church picnic in Philadelphia, designed to help promote George W. Bush's faith-based policies. Because I had serious misgivings about the president's performance to that point, my own involvement in the whole operation had left me feeling a bit like a pseudo person, so when I had the chance to shake Bush's hand, I said, "Mr. President, I hope you only serve one term. I'm very disappointed in your work so far."

His smiling response was swift: "Who cares what you think?"

But it was an unexpected return, to say the least, and as soon as our handshake was done, I stepped away and pulled out my notebook to write it down. This he noticed, and I heard him call out. I turned to see him 10 or 12 feet farther down the handshake line, craning his neck above the crowd -- he's shorter than I had expected -- and looking right at me, asking, "Who do you write for?"

Maybe he thought I was a renegade journalist; the press corps was expressly forbidden to interview people or mingle with the crowd. Or maybe he just wanted to know who was responsible for me, since nobody could get into the picnic unless they were with one of the organizing groups. But I wasn't trying to speak for anybody, and I certainly wasn't trying to goad a story out of him, so I stammered that I wasn't with anybody. As people started to notice, he grinned again and drawled, "Make sure you get it right."

I think it shows a tremendous amount of restraint on the President's part that all he said was "Who cares what you think". My immediate thoughts, if faced with the same situation, start with an F and a Y and then move on from there.

You can bet that Mr. Hangley doesn't win too many awards for tactfulness, but I guess he is just some kid fresh out of Columbia's journalism school. He is using this story as an attempt to tell the world what kind of man Bush really is, but I don' think this story will have the intended effect. I mean, come on: So Bush had been in office only four and half months and some douchebag kid, who undoubtedly was never a supporter shoots his mouth of in public and he expects Bush to just smile and say nothing? I'm sure that is the kind of leader that Bill Hangley wants, but not me.