Tuesday, December 30, 2008

"The Decider"

I was flipping through TV last night when I stumbled upon the documentary "The Decider" on MSNBC, hosted by Chris Matthews. Did anyone else catch it? It was sort of surreal watching a documentary "looking back" on the Bush presidency. Sure, maybe it's a bit early, he's not even out of office yet, but it was surely the first time I truly realized that Bush won't be our president anymore. I guess it's the strange realization that one day we'll be looking back at the last eight years as a piece of history. Like the way my parents would talk about Watergate or Vietnam. It's strange that one day I'll be telling some future kid about the Iraq war long after it's over.

Anyways, I haven't even said anything about the documentary. Basically it was trying to look at Bush's presidency with some sort of hindsight. I tell ya, it's interesting to see how much he's aged in the last 8 years. There was a clip of Bush sitting at his desk on 9/11 addressing the nation that evening, and he looked 10-15 years younger than he does now, complete with a full head of brown hair. Well, if you catch The Decider I would recommend it purely for the feeling it invokes of waking up from a long dream.

4 comments:

Little Earl said...

"It's strange that one day I'll be telling some future kid about the Iraq war long after it's over."

Yeah, like the year 2286! That is, if the United States hasn't already collapsed and split into five distinctly unique territories controlled by Russia, China, and Mexico, among others.

I remember my 7th grade social studies teacher telling us about how presidents seem to age faster than normal. When Clinton was elected, he suggested we take a photo of him out of a newspaper or a magazine and keep it, and then look at it again once Clinton left office. I did so, and eight years later, the difference was striking.

Even stranger was catching some footage of W. from 1988 in a documentary about Lee Atwater (Bush Sr.'s campaign adviser/proto-Rove). I looked at Dubya as a young man and thought, "He reminds me of somebody." Then I realized that he looked just like Timothy Bottoms in The Last Picture Show. And guess who played W. in Parker and Stone's sitcom parody "That's My Bush": Timothy Bottoms. Weird, people. Weird.

yoggoth said...

This sounds like those moments when I go to the mirror and make funny faces, thinking to myself, "It's so weird that I am me!"

ninquelote said...

I also find it weird that Yoggoth is Yoggoth.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC. That sounds like it must have been fair and balanced. But really, I find documentaries about presidents very interesting. They have a very alluring yet difficult job, and it sometimes pulls out qualities in a person that they never knew they had, or wished they didn't.

I've watched several documentaries on much early presidents (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln ...). I try not to watch stations that support communism, but I will definitely watch it if it shows up on Netflix.

yoggoth said...

Yeah, everyone knows that megacorporations Microsoft and General Electric(owner of NBC) are really just communist fronts heralding the arrival of the New World Order.