Another Grave Problem for George W. Bush

As nearly all literate Americans recognize (read: Not high school students), President George W. Bush hasn’t had a particularly good 2006. Iraq remains unstable; hurricane Katrina was a disaster; &c. Sure, the President didn’t fare as badly as, say, Michael Richards, but he most certainly didn’t enjoy the annus mirabilis he would have liked.

Under such circumstances, dear reader, we hate to pile more problems on George Bush’s plate. Yet a recent perusal of Newsweek—a magazine for people who don’t like to read—suggests that the President has yet another vexing problem to which he must soon attend.

The January 1, 2007 number of Newsweek, in addition to its highbrow coverage of Britney Spears, Lance Bass, and kindred delights, contains a mini-interview with Sir George Martin, the fellow who served as the producer for a rock group known as the Beatles. The occasion of this vignette in the magazine—like so much else that appears in Newsweek—was Martin’s new CD “Love,” which contains (dubiously enough) “re-worked” Beatles tracks.

Right about now, one might reasonably wonder how this relates to George W. Bush. After all, Sir George Martin, whatever his talents in the music business, doesn’t have much to do with American politics.

Ah, but we live during the days of Celebrity Political Diarrhea. As anyone who’s ever heard the words “Dixie Chicks” well knows, much media attention and cash can be made by celebrities offering noxious political opinions. For some reason, these famous and semi-famous halfwits believe that people are deeply interested in the learned political musings of, say, Bruce Springsteen.

Alas, during the course of his three-word interview with Newsweek, Sir George Martin just couldn’t contain his useless political bluster. Below we have reproduced the question that—surprisingly—prompted Sir George’s outburst as well as the outburst in question:

Was John [Lennon] just that cool?

John was certainly a very cool person. But there are plenty of cool people around now. Ravi Shankar for one, and Roger Federer for another. But not George Bush.

Oh, no: George W. Bush, the President of the United States, isn’t cool in the eyes of an 80-year-old record producer who’s currently remixing Beatles albums for more retirement cash! Horror of horrors! If only the President were more like Roger Federer, the tennis star with no discernable personality!

This will surely come as quite a blow to the President. Man, the guy who mixed “Strawberry Fields Forever” doesn’t think you’re “cool.” How depressing.

It’s nice that Sir George feels the need to act like a pre-teen and tell the world who’s cool and who isn’t? Tell us, Sir Cool and Collected, is Osama bin Laden cool? How hip is Hamas? George Galloway? We’re, like, dying, like, to, like, know.