George Bush the Edomite

Praying the Bible liturgically every day you don’t half get to know the bits that aren’t headlines or sound bites. Seldom do you see them enacted before your very eyes, like Muntadar al-Zeidi’s dramatic gesture at Sunday’s Bush Iraq presser — a graphic example of the ancient Semitic gesture of disgust and contempt to be found in Psalm 60:8 (Doublet at Psalm 108:9): עַל-אֱדוֹם אַשְׁלִיךְ נַעֲלִי — Over Edom will I cast out my shoe (Coverdale).

The curious can regularly encounter this gesture in the prayers of monastic communities at around 5.45 a.m. every Wednesday and Saturday morning. None of us are at our most compos mentis that early. Jerome rather softened it (“In Idumæam extendam calceamentum meam,”). The Hebrew is down and dirty – (root שלך: looks like a straight hiph‘îl)— to chuck/ pitch an offending object, like the rocks God tossed down from heaven in Joshua 10:10. The 1945 Latin liturgical psalter headed back towards the orignal (“Super Edom ponam calceamentum meam’’), but 1980 went a bit soft — “Super Idumæam extendam ...” Call me old-fashioned, but Coverdale’s BCP hit the nail on the head.


President Bush himself was correct — This is the 8th century BC Semitic equivalent of giving the finger on the freeway, but more considered, contemptuous and rather more dramatic. It was very striking to see this done on cable TV, and eliciting so much comment. The Bible speaks today! Whatever next? ritual shaving for humiliation? Cutting animals in half to make a contract? Moloch?

If it takes some heat out of the situation, the Ship of Fools has a Biblical Curse Generator, where you can smite your enemies with boils like Amalekite Dogs...

The Madness of King George

Around 2030, the story of the Bush administration will begin to emerge as real history. Until then, for those who can’t wait, there’s the Oliver Stone version — a surprisingly enjoyable night out with the rabbit who has been working the controls in Bush Junior’s brain all these years.

The movie poster helpfully spells out for those too dim to work out for themselves that “W.” is actually pronounced “Dubya”; and we are left with the distinct impression that the 43rd President is probably one of them. He comes over as a Mickey Mouse character; Mickey whose appeal Walt himself described as “a little guy trying his best.” Surrounded by intelligent, sometimes well-meaning, sometimes manipulative people, W. is an amiable buffoon with a desperate need to prove himself, a curously conflicted Big Kid, posing as a grown up world leader. Essentially, he is way out of his depth.

It took JFK 28 years to achieve his Stone biopic. It is thus a rare distinction to get your own before leaving office. Indeed, the figure at the centre of this movie is surprisingly sympatico — a small boy with his spoon in the jamjar and an engaging grin that goes right through him, like Blackpool runs through Blackpool rock.

All the Big Names show up for the party, and a squad of actors has had a wonderful romp impersonating the gang — Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rove, Scowcroft, Powell, Rice... There’s even a cameo Tony Blair down on the ranch, with his own ear-to-ear grin. Dubya, on a bizarre Oedipus trip all his own, propels the free world towards what Stone sees as the most idiotic, pointless and destructive fiasco of modern times. I wish I remembered the detail well enough to know which lines and incidents in this movie are actually historical. The future president’s deathly duel with a Pretzel is, I believe, historical; but I wonder about the line given to Colin Powell, where the statesman and soldier perceptively warns the president that this Iraq thing will mire down everything he is trying to achieve.

Dubya’s best efforts to prove his pappy wrong, glowingly prove his pappy right all along. On the way, he accidentally puts the prestige of the greatest nation on earth pretty much down the toilet, and makes a complete arse of himself even unto his own, plunging his ratings from the high 70’s to round about 20. If this genre catches on, Dubya II may attempt to explain why, whilst doing this, he saddled his countrymen with $35,000 a head of public debt; or as Reagan and Thatcher used to call it, deferred taxation.

You couldn’t make this stuff up — but then you don’t have to; you just have to hope someone can somehow put things back together again so that we get a 2030 from which historians can look back and tell us when to laugh and when to cry.

Remembering Humph (1921-2008)

Every now and then these islands produce a world class national treasure — William Shakespeare, Nelson, Queen Victoria, Monty Python and the late Queen Mum spring to mind. There in the background, however, through all those years has been Humphrey Lyttleton. The Bull's Head Barnes website says his band was established in 1684, but that’s just rumour and folklore. Any idiot who cares a pig's burp about jazz has at some time listened to the Monday night show he has presented since 1967, or been to the Bull’s Head; best jazz venue in London (along with the 606). Then there’s I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue, for 40 years the antidote to panel games.

Born at Eton, Buckinghamshire in 1921 (and ecclesiastically still Buckinghamshire), Humph has timelessly exhibited immaculate musical and comic timing, gentle quiptic silliness, and wonderment at the ridiculousness of it all. Anyone with a soul must be in deep mourning — “as the squirrel of time nibbles on the nuts of eternity while the irritated bulldog of destiny tries to shake him off,” we all notice it’s the end of the show. RIP.

Here’s a slightly vulgar final word. It is said that Percy Shaw, the Bradford inventor, noticed a cat walking towards him up the road one night in 1934, thought about it, and went straight to his drawing board to invent the Cat’s Eye road safety device. Next night, said Humph, the cat was walking away from him, and Percy went straight back to his drawing board and invented the Rotary mechanical pencil sharpener... Only in these islands, and by such a genius, would such a crazy noton be thought, let alone expressed.