The real joke about a G. W. Bush presidential libarary: How else might the words "Bush" and "library" appear in the same sentence?

http://quebec.indymedia.org/files/21232.jpg--click on it to enlarge

The other day, you may recall, I took a potshot at presidential brother Jeb, the outgoing governor of Florida, suggesting that it said something about his watch that more than a year after Miami-Dade's Northeast Regional Library had its roof kayoed by Hurricane Wilma, it's hard to detect signs of progress toward restoring this important facility. In the interim, a new so-called "branch library"--containing about 14 books and 50 DVDs--has been built nearby to take its place.

Of course this sad little vanity project could only be thought of as a replacement for the actual library by people who don't use libraries or know who anybody who does, people who don't in fact have any concept what libraries are for, people who have a deep-rooted contempt for learning and understanding of the world around them. Somehow it didn't seem like a stretch for me to slap a name on people like that: Bushes.

Now it seems I may have been unfair. Earlier this week the late-night comics had a field day with the announcement of plans for Chimpy the Prez's presidential library, which is scheduled to cost $500 million. "That's more than three times the cost of the Clinton library, and more than all the other libraries combined," Jimmy Kimmel pointed out. "Which makes you wonder, how many Garfield books can there be?"

Now of course there is something inherently hilarious about the idea of a library in any way connected with George W. Bush. You wonder if he's ever been inside a library in his life, especially as an adult. This is an individual whose deepest self seethes with loathing for the very idea of knowledge. (I never did understand it when people would say how "nice" and "likable" Chimpy is. It always seemed grotesquely obvious to me that his entire being is a smoldering volcano of hatred.) I'm afraid it has seemed likely to me that the greatest source of his popularity is the hatred so many people seem to share with him for those uppity types who know stuff and consequently think they're so smart.

Actually, though, Jimmy Kimmel had an even better line about Chimpy the Prez's project:

"It's not that the library is going to be extravagant. It's just that he's hiring Haliburton to build it. They're the best."