Workers' Liberty

Kitty Kelly’s new book about the Bush family — The Family — is the book that the capitalist political class deserves. It’s full of gossip, innuendo, heated-up Internet facts, speculation about familial dysfunction and disorder, rumour and salacious scandal.

It is a slick and sick exercise in muckraking. If any of the mud sticks then, good!

But we don’t go in for this kind stuff at Solidarity…

On the other hand they are a truly hideous family. (Favourite Bush-hate fact: George W’s mummy Barbara Bush saying during the first Gulf War: “Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?” )

Kelly would say, quite reasonably, that there are many other straight factual books about G W Bush and his family. And indeed there are.

A quick search on Amazon.com brings up 269 results. The bestsellers are such things as: Bushwhacked (that’s a good read actually), Bushisms (a third volume just published), Bush at War, Taking George W Bush Seriously (really!), The Early Years (tearing legs off frogs, getting whacked on alcohol and cocaine), Made in Texas, The Faith of GW. Then there are the more obscure ones like Bush’s Brain and the Tao of Bush!

Bush has been in power, what? Four and a bit years? Surely he must be the most written about President of all time?