Who is Harry Dean Anderson?
I know that Harry Anderson died.
And that Richard Dean (MacGyver) Anderson is still alive.
Barbara Bush Has Died
- Thread starter ConnorEl
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Who is Harry Dean Anderson?
I know that Harry Anderson died.
And that Richard Dean (MacGyver) Anderson is still alive.
Shorty
Boomer Boy
This is a great post. I’d forgotten some of those things. RIP.
ConnorEl
Well-known member
I'll copy a couple of pieces from the NYT for any here interested.
Barbara Bush, a First Lady Without Apologies
By Jon Meacham: Mr. Meacham is the author of “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush.”
Quote
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She knew who she was, and she saw no need to apologize for it. In the spring of 1990, the administration of Wellesley College — the alma mater, as it happened, of Hillary Rodham Clinton — invited Barbara Bush, then the first lady of the United States, to speak at commencement and receive an honorary degree. Students at the women’s college protested, declaring in a petition that Mrs. Bush had “gained recognition through the achievements of her husband,” and adding that Wellesley “teaches us that we will be rewarded on the basis of our own merit, not on that of a spouse.”
And so a generational battle was joined. As her husband, George H. W. Bush, put it in his private White House diary, Mrs. Bush was being attacked “because she hasn’t made it on her own — she’s where she is because she’s her husband’s wife.” Mr. Bush added: “What’s wrong with the fact that she’s a good mother, a good wife, great volunteer, great leader for literacy and other fine causes? Nothing, but to listen to these elitist kids there is.” To the young women of the last decade of the 20th century, Mrs. Bush, who had dropped out of Smith College to marry, seemed a throwback to a less enlightened time.
Mrs. Bush, who died on Tuesday at age 92, never flinched, appearing at Wellesley and using her commencement address to explore the complexities of life’s choices. There was no single path, she told the graduates; one followed one’s heart and did the best one could. “Maybe we should adjust faster, maybe we should adjust slower,” she said. “But whatever the era, whatever the times, one thing will never change: Fathers and mothers, if you have children — they must come first. You must read to your children, hug your children, and you must love your children. Your success as a family, our success as a society, depends not on what happens in the White House, but on what happens inside your house.”
The loudest applause came when she remarked that perhaps there was someone in the audience who would, like her, one day preside over the White House as the president’s spouse. “And I wish him well,” Mrs. Bush said.
It was classic Barbara Pierce Bush: politically skillful, balanced — and good for her husband, for she presented herself as at once reasonable and reasonably conservative, which was the essence of Mr. Bush’s own political persona.
Barbara Bush was the first lady of the Greatest Generation — a woman who came of age at midcentury, endured a world war, built a life in Texas, raised her family, lost a daughter to leukemia, and promoted first her husband’s rise in politics, and then that of her sons. As the wife of one president and the mother of another, she holds a distinction that belongs to only one other American in the history of the Republic, Abigail Adams.
It’s neither sentimental nor hyperbolic to note that Barbara Bush was the last first lady to preside over an even remotely bipartisan capital. She and her husband were masters of what Franklin D. Roosevelt once referred to as “the science of human relationships.”
Part of the reason grew out of the generational and cultural disposition that had prompted the Wellesley protesters to speak out. Born in New York City in 1925, raised in Rye, N.Y., and long shaped by the WASP code of her mother-in-law, Dorothy Walker Bush, Mrs. Bush was reflexively hospitable. The elder Bushes governed in a spirit of congeniality and of civility, a far cry from the partisan ferocity of our own time. In her White House — and at Camp David and at Walker’s Point, the family’s compound on the coast of Maine — Democrats and Republicans were welcomed with equal frequency and equal grace.
She had always known what she was getting into, for George H. W. Bush saw life as both a great adventure and as a long reunion mixer. After graduating from Yale in 1948, Mr. Bush drove himself to Odessa, Tex., sending for Barbara and George W., who had been born in 1946, once he’d rented half a duplex they were to share with a mother-daughter team of prostitutes. It was the first of 27 moves the Bushes would make on their American odyssey.
Writing her parents from Odessa to thank them for sending $25 to pay for nursery school for George W., Mrs. Bush reported that “G.W.B. has a wee bit of the Devil in him. This a.m. while I was writing a letter early he stuck a can opener into my leg. Very painful and it was all I could do to keep from giving him a jab or two.” They would lovingly tease each other for decades; George W. Bush often said he had inherited his father’s eyes and his mother’s mouth.
And her tongue could be sharp. In 1984, after she unwisely described Geraldine Ferraro, who campaigned against her husband as Walter Mondale’s vice-presidential running mate, as a word that rhymed with “rich,” she acknowledged that her family was now referring to her as the “poet laureate.”
She was tireless in her advocacy for literacy, and in 1989, at a time when AIDS was still shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding, Mrs. Bush visited a home for H.I.V.-infected infants in Washington, and hugged the children there, as well as an infected adult man. It sent a powerful message — one of compassion, of love, of acceptance. Her popularity as first lady was such that, in 1992, some voters sported buttons with a final plea for the World War II generation: “Re-Elect Barbara’s Husband.”
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Barbara Bush, a First Lady Without Apologies
By Jon Meacham: Mr. Meacham is the author of “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush.”
Quote
----------
She knew who she was, and she saw no need to apologize for it. In the spring of 1990, the administration of Wellesley College — the alma mater, as it happened, of Hillary Rodham Clinton — invited Barbara Bush, then the first lady of the United States, to speak at commencement and receive an honorary degree. Students at the women’s college protested, declaring in a petition that Mrs. Bush had “gained recognition through the achievements of her husband,” and adding that Wellesley “teaches us that we will be rewarded on the basis of our own merit, not on that of a spouse.”
And so a generational battle was joined. As her husband, George H. W. Bush, put it in his private White House diary, Mrs. Bush was being attacked “because she hasn’t made it on her own — she’s where she is because she’s her husband’s wife.” Mr. Bush added: “What’s wrong with the fact that she’s a good mother, a good wife, great volunteer, great leader for literacy and other fine causes? Nothing, but to listen to these elitist kids there is.” To the young women of the last decade of the 20th century, Mrs. Bush, who had dropped out of Smith College to marry, seemed a throwback to a less enlightened time.
Mrs. Bush, who died on Tuesday at age 92, never flinched, appearing at Wellesley and using her commencement address to explore the complexities of life’s choices. There was no single path, she told the graduates; one followed one’s heart and did the best one could. “Maybe we should adjust faster, maybe we should adjust slower,” she said. “But whatever the era, whatever the times, one thing will never change: Fathers and mothers, if you have children — they must come first. You must read to your children, hug your children, and you must love your children. Your success as a family, our success as a society, depends not on what happens in the White House, but on what happens inside your house.”
The loudest applause came when she remarked that perhaps there was someone in the audience who would, like her, one day preside over the White House as the president’s spouse. “And I wish him well,” Mrs. Bush said.
It was classic Barbara Pierce Bush: politically skillful, balanced — and good for her husband, for she presented herself as at once reasonable and reasonably conservative, which was the essence of Mr. Bush’s own political persona.
Barbara Bush was the first lady of the Greatest Generation — a woman who came of age at midcentury, endured a world war, built a life in Texas, raised her family, lost a daughter to leukemia, and promoted first her husband’s rise in politics, and then that of her sons. As the wife of one president and the mother of another, she holds a distinction that belongs to only one other American in the history of the Republic, Abigail Adams.
It’s neither sentimental nor hyperbolic to note that Barbara Bush was the last first lady to preside over an even remotely bipartisan capital. She and her husband were masters of what Franklin D. Roosevelt once referred to as “the science of human relationships.”
Part of the reason grew out of the generational and cultural disposition that had prompted the Wellesley protesters to speak out. Born in New York City in 1925, raised in Rye, N.Y., and long shaped by the WASP code of her mother-in-law, Dorothy Walker Bush, Mrs. Bush was reflexively hospitable. The elder Bushes governed in a spirit of congeniality and of civility, a far cry from the partisan ferocity of our own time. In her White House — and at Camp David and at Walker’s Point, the family’s compound on the coast of Maine — Democrats and Republicans were welcomed with equal frequency and equal grace.
She had always known what she was getting into, for George H. W. Bush saw life as both a great adventure and as a long reunion mixer. After graduating from Yale in 1948, Mr. Bush drove himself to Odessa, Tex., sending for Barbara and George W., who had been born in 1946, once he’d rented half a duplex they were to share with a mother-daughter team of prostitutes. It was the first of 27 moves the Bushes would make on their American odyssey.
Writing her parents from Odessa to thank them for sending $25 to pay for nursery school for George W., Mrs. Bush reported that “G.W.B. has a wee bit of the Devil in him. This a.m. while I was writing a letter early he stuck a can opener into my leg. Very painful and it was all I could do to keep from giving him a jab or two.” They would lovingly tease each other for decades; George W. Bush often said he had inherited his father’s eyes and his mother’s mouth.
And her tongue could be sharp. In 1984, after she unwisely described Geraldine Ferraro, who campaigned against her husband as Walter Mondale’s vice-presidential running mate, as a word that rhymed with “rich,” she acknowledged that her family was now referring to her as the “poet laureate.”
She was tireless in her advocacy for literacy, and in 1989, at a time when AIDS was still shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding, Mrs. Bush visited a home for H.I.V.-infected infants in Washington, and hugged the children there, as well as an infected adult man. It sent a powerful message — one of compassion, of love, of acceptance. Her popularity as first lady was such that, in 1992, some voters sported buttons with a final plea for the World War II generation: “Re-Elect Barbara’s Husband.”
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ConnorEl
Well-known member
Mrs. No-Nonsense
By Christopher Buckley: Mr. Buckley, a novelist, was speechwriter to Vice President George H.W. Bush from 1981 until 1983.
Quote:
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I met her in 1981, when I went to work for her husband as speechwriter. I was a bit in awe of her — who wasn’t? — and, I confess, a bit scared. A few weeks in, I wrote a speech that went over well, in no small part due to President George H.W. Bush’s solid delivery. After the event as we reboarded Air Force Two, Barbara Bush spotted me and said, “That’s the best speech he’s ever given.” I said, “Well, we all worked hard on that speech.” Her face went stony as she brushed past my seat. She said, “Oh, don’t be such a Pollyanna.”
Ouch. Boy, did that leave a welt. It took a while to heal, but I realized she was absolutely right, and thus learned two lessons: 1) Don’t be a Pollyanna, and 2) Mrs. Bush had a bull-detector like no one. She gave it to you with the bark off. But when you earned her affection, which I eventually did, it meant all the more. You knew it was real.
There was no falsity, no pretense, no guile, no spin, no art to Barbara Bush, who died on Tuesday. She was What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get avant la lettre. (That is, before the concept of WYSIWYG had a name.) Americans are always clamoring about the virtues of “transparency.” Barbara Bush was as transparent as distilled water. Who but she would have said of her own (adored) son, as he weighed a campaign for the presidency, “If we can’t find more than two or three families to run for high office, that’s silly. There are a lot of great families. There are other people out there that are very qualified. We’ve had enough Bushes!” Thanks, Mom!
If she was Mrs. No-Nonsense, she also had a playful, even girlish, side to her. On one occasion, I was alone in a freight elevator with Mr. and Mrs. Bush and their Secret Service detail when it got stuck between floors. Stuck elevators are viewed grimly by the Secret Service. The atmosphere inside quickly elevated (as it were) to Condition Red, with hands reaching for the holstered Glock 9’s, orders barked into wrist-mics and all the rest. The Bushes were blithe. I was standing behind them. Mr. Bush’s fingers reached for Mrs. Bush’s derrière and gave it a pinch. She turned to him and grinned like an 18-year-old. “Hi-ya, fellah,” she said. So I can claim to have witnessed a primal scene between Mom and Dad Bush.
The last time we were together was a few years ago in Kennebunkport. My doctor wife and I had dinner with them. Mr. Bush had been ill, and on a course of antibiotics. But he was feeling much better now. When the waitress arrived, he ordered a vodka martini.
“You can’t have a martini, George,” Mrs. Bush said sternly.
The poor college-age waitress didn’t know who to obey — the former leader of the free world, or Mrs. Bush. That she even hesitated speaks eloquently to the authoritative aura of Barbara Pierce Bush.
I caught the waitress’s eye and signaled her to, yeah, bring the former leader of the free world his martini. Go for it! Message received, she returned and set his frosty see-through in front of him. Mrs. Bush stared at it in disbelief, eyes widening. Quicker than a mongoose, Mr. Bush’s hand shot out and took possession of his drink.
“Who told you to bring him that?” Mrs. Bush demanded of the now-stricken waitress. To spare her summary execution, I fessed up. Mrs. Bush gave me a whack on the shoulder. (It was not an affectionate tap.) My wife tried to run interference by asking Mr. Bush what kind of antibiotic he’d been on. Perhaps there were no contraindications between it and vodka martinis?
“You stay out of it!” Mrs. Bush barked.
By now, three out of four of us were laughing. The fourth was emphatically not. Acting from some suicidal impulse, I covertly ordered a second martini for Mr. Bush. When it arrived, his hand again did the mongoose thing.
“Fine,” Mrs. Bush said. “Go ahead. I don’t care if you die. I’m not going to take care of you any more.”
Mr. Bush winked and gave me a thumbs-up. No victory in my life is as sweet to me as the memory of that one, the night Mr. Bush and I outfoxed “the Silver Fox.”
As I reflect, it was the one time I ever detected falsity in Mrs. Bush, because it was inconceivable to me that she would cease, for one minute, caring for the man to whom she was wholly devoted throughout 73 years of marriage. What is conceivable, today, is the awful weight of Mr. Bush’s loss, and America’s.
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By Christopher Buckley: Mr. Buckley, a novelist, was speechwriter to Vice President George H.W. Bush from 1981 until 1983.
Quote:
----------
I met her in 1981, when I went to work for her husband as speechwriter. I was a bit in awe of her — who wasn’t? — and, I confess, a bit scared. A few weeks in, I wrote a speech that went over well, in no small part due to President George H.W. Bush’s solid delivery. After the event as we reboarded Air Force Two, Barbara Bush spotted me and said, “That’s the best speech he’s ever given.” I said, “Well, we all worked hard on that speech.” Her face went stony as she brushed past my seat. She said, “Oh, don’t be such a Pollyanna.”
Ouch. Boy, did that leave a welt. It took a while to heal, but I realized she was absolutely right, and thus learned two lessons: 1) Don’t be a Pollyanna, and 2) Mrs. Bush had a bull-detector like no one. She gave it to you with the bark off. But when you earned her affection, which I eventually did, it meant all the more. You knew it was real.
There was no falsity, no pretense, no guile, no spin, no art to Barbara Bush, who died on Tuesday. She was What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get avant la lettre. (That is, before the concept of WYSIWYG had a name.) Americans are always clamoring about the virtues of “transparency.” Barbara Bush was as transparent as distilled water. Who but she would have said of her own (adored) son, as he weighed a campaign for the presidency, “If we can’t find more than two or three families to run for high office, that’s silly. There are a lot of great families. There are other people out there that are very qualified. We’ve had enough Bushes!” Thanks, Mom!
If she was Mrs. No-Nonsense, she also had a playful, even girlish, side to her. On one occasion, I was alone in a freight elevator with Mr. and Mrs. Bush and their Secret Service detail when it got stuck between floors. Stuck elevators are viewed grimly by the Secret Service. The atmosphere inside quickly elevated (as it were) to Condition Red, with hands reaching for the holstered Glock 9’s, orders barked into wrist-mics and all the rest. The Bushes were blithe. I was standing behind them. Mr. Bush’s fingers reached for Mrs. Bush’s derrière and gave it a pinch. She turned to him and grinned like an 18-year-old. “Hi-ya, fellah,” she said. So I can claim to have witnessed a primal scene between Mom and Dad Bush.
The last time we were together was a few years ago in Kennebunkport. My doctor wife and I had dinner with them. Mr. Bush had been ill, and on a course of antibiotics. But he was feeling much better now. When the waitress arrived, he ordered a vodka martini.
“You can’t have a martini, George,” Mrs. Bush said sternly.
The poor college-age waitress didn’t know who to obey — the former leader of the free world, or Mrs. Bush. That she even hesitated speaks eloquently to the authoritative aura of Barbara Pierce Bush.
I caught the waitress’s eye and signaled her to, yeah, bring the former leader of the free world his martini. Go for it! Message received, she returned and set his frosty see-through in front of him. Mrs. Bush stared at it in disbelief, eyes widening. Quicker than a mongoose, Mr. Bush’s hand shot out and took possession of his drink.
“Who told you to bring him that?” Mrs. Bush demanded of the now-stricken waitress. To spare her summary execution, I fessed up. Mrs. Bush gave me a whack on the shoulder. (It was not an affectionate tap.) My wife tried to run interference by asking Mr. Bush what kind of antibiotic he’d been on. Perhaps there were no contraindications between it and vodka martinis?
“You stay out of it!” Mrs. Bush barked.
By now, three out of four of us were laughing. The fourth was emphatically not. Acting from some suicidal impulse, I covertly ordered a second martini for Mr. Bush. When it arrived, his hand again did the mongoose thing.
“Fine,” Mrs. Bush said. “Go ahead. I don’t care if you die. I’m not going to take care of you any more.”
Mr. Bush winked and gave me a thumbs-up. No victory in my life is as sweet to me as the memory of that one, the night Mr. Bush and I outfoxed “the Silver Fox.”
As I reflect, it was the one time I ever detected falsity in Mrs. Bush, because it was inconceivable to me that she would cease, for one minute, caring for the man to whom she was wholly devoted throughout 73 years of marriage. What is conceivable, today, is the awful weight of Mr. Bush’s loss, and America’s.
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cville deac
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Yeah, Barbara was cool. Both she and George have lived long and eventful lives but have been going downhill recently. Definitely a cool and tough woman who was completely beholden to family but not to party.
As for Donald, I think it's good that the only thing his office messed up was the date. Barbara despised Trump (as does the entire Bush clan), and I was a little surprised he didn't tweet something nasty and/or sarcastic.
WakeandBake
Well-known member
the Georges should have listened to these women more.
WakeandBake
Well-known member
Agree. Incompetence at every level.
cville deac
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Not sure about that. Think she may have been too blunt and honest to have been a politician at any time.
PhDeac
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Honestly, I think she had the right combination of personality, bluntness, and political views to be a successful middle of the road politician today. She'd piss off enough people on both sides to gain popularity.
Newenglanddeac
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Barbara Bush blamed Trump for her heart problems
Barbara Bush blamed Donald Trump for her heart attack," begins a new excerpt from "The Matriarch," an inside look at the former first lady from USA Today's D.C. bureau chief Susan Page — out next week.
Details: Just before the first anniversary of Trump's election, Bush said, "I'm trying not to think about it. We're a strong country, and I think it will all work out."
And asked last year if she was still a Republican: "I'd probably say no today."
"'I don’t understand why people are for him,' she said in one interview. In another, she expressed astonishment that women could support him."
"George Bush ended up voting for Hillary Clinton, the first time in his life that he had cast a ballot for a Democrat for president."
Barbara "wrote in Jeb’s name on the last day of early voting. 'I could not vote for Trump or Clinton,' she wrote in her diary."
"After Trump was elected, a friend in Kennebunkport gave her a Trump countdown clock as a joke. The red, white, and blue digital clock displayed how many days, hours, minutes and seconds remained in Trump’s term."
She liked it "so much that when the Bushes returned to Houston that October, she brought it with her. It sat on her bedside table, where she could see it every day. It was there to the day she died."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ax...ack-9471e1c6-0753-4ebb-b7ac-d0e8ec9c8e2e.html
Barbara Bush blamed Donald Trump for her heart attack," begins a new excerpt from "The Matriarch," an inside look at the former first lady from USA Today's D.C. bureau chief Susan Page — out next week.
Details: Just before the first anniversary of Trump's election, Bush said, "I'm trying not to think about it. We're a strong country, and I think it will all work out."
And asked last year if she was still a Republican: "I'd probably say no today."
"'I don’t understand why people are for him,' she said in one interview. In another, she expressed astonishment that women could support him."
"George Bush ended up voting for Hillary Clinton, the first time in his life that he had cast a ballot for a Democrat for president."
Barbara "wrote in Jeb’s name on the last day of early voting. 'I could not vote for Trump or Clinton,' she wrote in her diary."
"After Trump was elected, a friend in Kennebunkport gave her a Trump countdown clock as a joke. The red, white, and blue digital clock displayed how many days, hours, minutes and seconds remained in Trump’s term."
She liked it "so much that when the Bushes returned to Houston that October, she brought it with her. It sat on her bedside table, where she could see it every day. It was there to the day she died."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ax...ack-9471e1c6-0753-4ebb-b7ac-d0e8ec9c8e2e.html