THERE'S MORE TO A LIBRARY THAN "MY PET GOAT" AND SOME CAMOOZ-- OPPOSITION BUILDS AGAINST BUSH... AT SMU

The mediocre (at best) president who spawned the contemptible creature who is all but universally recognized as the absolute worst leader the United States has ever had, is fretting that the media has been treating the dysfunctional monstrosity he unleashed on the world with "personal animosity." I suspect historians will be a lot less kind to George W than the corporately-controlled mass media is.

In the vain hope of offering an opinion that diverges from the mainstream, Bush family operatives have been working on plans for a George W Bush Library-- complete with a right wing think tank propaganda center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. It isn't a library with copies of "My Pet Goat," his coloring books or of the fake reading lists of books by Camus and Shakespeare (3 of 'em) his press secretaries claimed he was absorbing over the holidays.

This morning CNN ran a story about the campus protests around the Bush Library and right wing propaganda center being proposed. The New York Times covered it a couple weeks ago. And this week the Austin American-Statesman looked at the protests from a Christian point of view. "Bush has worn his Christianity on his sleeve" and has done his best to trick millions of easily-programmed evangelicals into blindly supporting him, as he made believe he was promoting faith-based programs and relying on "God" to tell him what to do. Not all Christians buy into Bush's self-serving baloney.

The United Methodist Church, of which Bush and Laura are members and which owns the school, has 10 12 bishops who have already publicly urged SMU to reject the library. One of the organizers of the protest is a former professor at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology, who told the Dallas Morning News that he doesn't want his school to "hitch its future star" to the war and other aspects of President Bush's legacy. Only 3 bishops and have come out in favor of the library-- as has half the school's board of trustees.

A small but vocal group of SMU faculty and Methodist clergy from around the country have raised objections to the library because they say Bush's policies conflict with church ethics and principles. Opponents also worry that a Bush institute would establish a "neoconservative bully pulpit" on campus.

An online petition opposing the library at SMU has gathered several thousand signatures, and editorials on various church Web sites have blasted Bush for the Iraq war, the treatment of detainees at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the use of military interrogation tactics some regard as torture.

The Rev. William McElvaney, professor emeritus of preaching and worship at SMU's Perkins School of Theology and one of the most outspoken critics, insists his motivation is not partisan.

"When people say, 'You're just politically motivated,' my answer is very clear: We are ethically motivated by what we see are the deepest Christian values," he said.

Though other schools, including Baylor University in Waco, have expressed interest, Bush's library committee has been in exclusive talks with SMU, which is first lady Laura Bush's alma mater.

Bush isn't the first president to see his library spark opposition. Duke University, also a Methodist-founded school, rejected President Nixon's papers, and Lyndon Johnson's library at the University of Texas met with some hostility in Austin before its dedication in 1971...

SMU's board of trustees will make the final decision on whether to accept Bush's library.

The debate on campus and online is lively and impassioned... in a Methodist kind of way. Many don't see a "good fit" between the church and Bush because it "is way to the left of where (Bush) is." Methodist schools like SMU, Boston University, Emory and Syracuse are not crackpot Bible colleges but bona fide, recognized universities; they are nonsectarian and operate independently from the church. But some argue that the school's Methodist heritage should be considered in the library decision. "Starting a pre-emptive war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, I regard as totally foreign to the United Methodist ethos," explained one professor. The petition at protectsmu.org states: "As United Methodists, we believe that the linking of his presidency with a university bearing the Methodist name is utterly inappropriate."

There are some fascists involved with the school who don't agree or who see the library as an opportunity for financial gain. CNN suggested this morning that it would make the campus a target for people who hate Bush. They didn't estimate what percentage of the world's population that would be. But take out Utah, the Old Confederacy, some sheiks in the oil business, and some remote parts of Idaho are you're approaching the high 90s.


UPDATE: MINISTER CALLS BUSH "AS FAR AWAY FROM THE FUNDAMENTAL TEACHINGS OF JESUS CHRIST AS YOU CAN GET"

Chances are if you're a DWT regular, you already know that. But odd that this story is getting a lot more coverage in other countries than it is in the U.S. Allen Freeman has a big feature in today's Toronto Globe and Mail

Southern Methodist University is an island of privilege near the centre of Dallas, a place where SUVs are de rigueur in the student parking lot and young women go to class sporting Louis Vuitton handbags adorned with sorority pins.
The student body, according to The Princeton Review, which ranks U.S. colleges, is overwhelmingly southern, white, upper-class and "very conservative." Laura Bush is on the university's board, as was Dick Cheney before he became Vice-President.
There's even a Laura Bush Promenade, thanks to a $250,000 gift from her husband.
It's the kind of place where the Bushes, who are Methodists, should feel perfectly at home.
Yet SMU finds itself in the midst of controversy over the legacy of George W.'s presidency, dividing the university's faculty and the United Methodist Church, which founded the university and still owns it.

Last month, a special White House committee announced that it had decided to narrow its choice of sites for the George W. Bush Presidential Library from three Texas universities to just SMU, and would begin exclusive negotiations with the college on details of the facility and an accompanying think tank.
SMU president Gerald Turner was enthusiastic about the announcement, calling it an honour to house the Bush library and describing it as "a tremendous resource for the study of presidential decision-making in the post-9/11 era." But some members of the faculty and Methodist activists say SMU's reputation will be damaged by linkage with a controversial president -- and by the right-wing think tank that comes with it.
"I think that George Bush has been in his presidency so inconsistent with fundamental Christianity that he should not be associated with a Methodist university," said Rev. Andrew Weaver, a graduate of SMU's Perkins School of Theology and organizer of an online petition opposing the library, which gathered 8,100 signatures in five days. "He's about as far away from the fundamental teachings of Jesus Christ as you can get."
The debate has put the university administration on the defensive. On Wednesday, for the first time, Dr. Turner agreed to field questions, meeting 125 faculty members in private. Afterward, theology professor Susanne Johnson told the Dallas Morning News that he "did not . . . allay any of my concerns about the inappropriateness of a partisan institute on campus."
A presidential library is not simply a building lined with stacks of presidential background papers, routine announcements and old speeches. Now 11 in number, they have morphed into research centres with full-scale museums. Construction costs are covered by private donations, but operating expenses fall to the U.S. government.
The Bill Clinton presidential library, which cost $165-million (U.S.), demonstrates how the facilities have evolved into political theme parks. In addition to 75 million pages of official and personal documents, 1,850,000 photos and 75,000 presidential gifts, the complex includes copies of the Oval Office and cabinet room, an orientation theatre and a special exhibit dedicated to former vice-president Al Gore. Since opening in November, 2004, it has become a major tourist attraction in Little Rock, Ark.
The George W. Bush Library appears to be the biggest and most elaborate one yet, a sprawling complex that is expected to include an IMAX cinema. One report estimates the cost at a whopping $500-million, a figure that TV late-show host Conan O'Brien jokes "would work out to $100-million a book."
Rev. William McElvaney, an emeritus professor of preaching and worship at the Perkins School, helped to stir up the current debate with an article published in a campus newspaper. "Do we want SMU to benefit financially from a legacy of massive violence, destruction and death brought about by the Bush presidency in dismissal of broad international opinion?" he wrote... even supporters are worried about including a policy institute that would be independent of the university and report only to a Bush family foundation. The concern is that the institute would choose researchers who follow Mr. Bush's conservative philosophy and stifle academic debate.

Bush says if SMU doesn't want his library he'll take it to a small unaccredited school in Waco where no one looks a gift horse in the mouth.