brainrow

This seems like an awkward moment:

Despite a steady downpour that chilled thousands gathered Saturday in the shipyard here, President Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, basked in the warm embrace of extended family and friends as they celebrated the christening of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier named after the former president.

…

President Bush also drew laughs when he lauded his steely mother, after noting that the USS George H.W. Bush will be the latest in the Nimitz class of aircraft carriers. “She is unrelenting, she is unshakable, she is unyielding, she is unstoppable,” Bush thundered.

“As a matter of fact,” he added, “probably should have been named the Barbara Bush.”

Uh…

Okay, I realize it was a joke, heh heh. But isn’t there a sort of creepy hostility, when something has been named in honor of your father, in saying it should have been named for your mother, instead?

There is a history here, remember. When Bob Woodward asked George W. Bush whether he consulted with his father in the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush said “You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to.”

In the short-lived CBS TV series Joan of Arcadia, God appears to Joan Girardi in a variety of human forms, and talks to her. When Joan listens and acts accordingly, good things happen or bad things are prevented.

At one point, Joan asks why a passerby didn’t see God. “Just didn’t notice me,” is the reply. “That happens a lot.”

In the even shorter-lived Fox TV series Wonderfalls, Jaye Tyler hears voices. Inanimate objects — a wax lion, a brass monkey bookend, a cartoon bunny printed on the side of a box — deliver cryptic messages. When Jaye deciphers them and acts accordingly, good things happen or bad things are prevented.

At one point, frustrated and fearful, Jaye demands of the brass monkey, “Tell me why you talk to me!”

The brass monkey answers, “Because you listen.”

When George W. Bush appeals to his “higher father,” do you suppose he ever listens? Could he ever hear something that would make him change his mind?