The Ice Bucket Challenge, America's favorite (wasteful) viral water dumping campaign to raise money for ALS research, can now include a former president amongst the soaked.
Today Politico Magazine’s Timothy J. Burger looks back at the “gay underground” of the George W. Bush administration, whose leaders famously supported amending the U.S. Constitution to federally ban gay marriage, and even paid off newspaper columnists to defend the amendment. So how big was the Bush White House’s velvet mafia? We finally have an answer.
Everyone's favorite retiree George W. Bush appeared on The Tonight Show on Tuesday, ostensibly to promote his new library but also to show off one of his new paintings, which he gave to host Jay Leno. The painting, a portrait of Leno, marks something of an artistic shift for Bush, who has spent the past several months seemingly painting only animals—specifically, cats and dogs.
George W. Bush has been out of office for five years now, and it's been a low-key five years, spent painting watercolors, opening his presidential library, and undergoing minor heart surgery. But apart from these occasional updates, 43 has stayed well under the radar — and that probably won't change.
Two new paintings by former president George W. Bush, published for the first time here on Gawker, give us a new window into the ongoing development of the tortured artist/torture advocate—and opens the possibility for a new phase in his oeuvre: cats.
If anything good came out of today's George W. Bush Presidential Center dedication in Dallas, it is only this picture of President Obama with Bush's 87-year-old mother, Barbara. I have no idea what's going on here—sneeze? argument? accusatory pointing?—but it looks a lot more interesting than the George W. Bush Presidential Center will be.
George W. Bush's presidential center will be dedicated today in Dallas, Texas. It's the biggest and most expensive presidential center yet—at 226,560 square feet and a price tag of $250 million. All five living U.S. presidents were there to honor number 43; Bill Clinton even went so far as to mention in his speech that he wanted Bush to paint his portrait.
In an interview with ABC News to promote his new game-filled library, George W. Bush spoke about the most important moment of his presidency: the decision to go to war with Iraq. That war, which led to the deaths of at least 123,000-134,000 Iraqi civilians and over 4,400 U.S. troops, was in large part fought because of the incorrect information that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. But don't worry, Bush is still “very comfortable” with his decision to invade.
My fellow Americans, it is time. Time for a life-altering journey of self-discovery and introspection with George W. Bush.
A watermelon, viewed from above, casts a greenish shadow on a white table. Two small figures on a putting green are spied from behind a distant tree. A horse with cow-like markings stands in field. Dogs, of course: a Shih Tzu and a Boxer sitting against an electric blue void. A Sheepdog next to a ball. A Corgi and a Lab at awkward, physically impossible angles, splayed out against the ground. And some kind of hound mix, maybe, grey and monstrous, sitting outside the White House, separated from the seat of power by iron bars, staring ambivalently out of frame.
In February, a hacker named Guccifer revealed to the world the hidden artistic talents of George W. Bush, releasing to The Smoking Gun a handful of photographs of oil paintings by the former president that had been taken from personal Bush family emails. The images were well-received by critics and laypeople alike, but they represented only a small portion of the budding outsider artist's oeuvre. Little more was being made available: In an interview with an Atlanta television station, his art teacher said he'd painted "over 50 dogs," tantalizingly few of which were actually shown on the broadcast. Otherwise, the Texan Master was silent. The world was crying out for more Bush art, more raw talent, more lush brushstrokes—more dogs—and nothing was forthcoming.
As we mentioned earlier, a hacker calling himself (or herself) Guccifer has penetrated the electronic worlds of George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, and a number of other political figures. Screengrabs of various email conversations that Bush, Clinton, and others have participated in have been floating around the internet. And it has come to our attention on this, the day of the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on the orders of George W. Bush, that one of those screengrabs credibly displays Bush's private email address. It is: gwb@ogwb.org. Please let him know that you're thinking of him today.
