All that's really changed about George W. Bush is that reality has made it impossible for his handlers to keep pretending his screw-ups are triumphs

In the grand scheme of things it may not matter a great deal. I just bristle a bit at suggestions that G. W. Bush has "changed" somehow, that he is, perhaps, crazy, now as opposed to whatever he's been in the past.

Really, though, all that's changed, it seems to me, is that reality has--finally!--caught up with the spoiled brat. Because emotionally that's all he is: a pampered, overprivileged, lazy, greedy little shithead who has destroyed every single damn thing he has ever touched.

Clearly something has changed, though. After all, look how many people used to think he was the second coming of Jesus--or maybe better, the first coming of our Lord and Master George W, God's chosen representative on earth.

Eerily, a lot of people still believe that. Which goes to show you how modest a pull reality exerts on our species. But a lot of people who used to think that way clearly don't anymore.

I'm not sure that the true scale of his ignorance and ineptitude has sunk in with them, but I do think that the Bush presidency has never recovered from those ghastly days of TV images of New Orleans dying--and large numbers of New Orleanians being abandoned to their fate while our government did . . . well, who knows what the heck our government was doing besides passing the buck?

Heck, it was so bad, even Fox News couldn't cover its beloved George's behind. I assume you've seen that clip of Sean "I Really Am As Dumb As I Seem" Hannity in the safety of his studio trying to enforce "perspective" on the field reporter who was attempting to convey to Fox viewers the horror of what he was witnessing.

But even then, it wasn't as if anything about George W. Bush himself had changed. What he was had simply come into relief.

So what had changed? This, I think: simply that he no longer had that coterie of owners/handlers/supporters around him capable of (1) papering over his failures and (2) worse, deluding him into thinking that each succeeding failure was in fact an ever-greater triumph.

It's not that there aren't still people who would like to cover for him. It's just that it has become increasingly impossible. With regard to Iraq, for example, ingenious as the administration has been to seal most of the country off from the reality that we're fighting a real war (as opposed to the misty, mostly mythical "war on terror" they prefer to yammer about), it has become impossible to shield an ever larger number of Americans from the reality that something bad, something really bad, is going on, and it's not going to get better, only worse.

Frank Rich sees something new in these "near rages" the president sometimes exhibits. I really don't think so. But as I was saying the other day, you have to be a pretty careless observer not to have noticed the cauldron of rage boiling over inside the man. All that's happening is that, apparently for the first time in his life, he's not getting his way. And he's reacting exactly the way you would expect of a spoiled, malevolent child--brought up without the capacity for empathy, conscience or morality--caught in this situation: He's spluttering with rage. What I don't get is: What is in any way surprising about this?

In his own head, he is a human of near-divine perfection. So why aren't people bowing down and kissing his feet the way they used to? Isn't the explanation obvious? The ungrateful assholes must not be worthy of his greatness.

Is George W. Bush out of touch with reality? Well, of course. There was never any question about that, was there? The only question I raised was: When are you suggesting that he was in touch with reality?