The Blair House Project
Posted in: Bigotsphere
An Iraqi newsman throws his shoes at George W. Bush. Bush throws a house, Blair House, at his successor, President-elect Barack Obama. And so goes the ignominious end of the most ridiculous and dangerous president in American history.
The Obamas wanted to move early into Blair House so their children could start school. No, no, said Bush. That room’s taken. Great evils like war and enforced poverty can cause us to overlook the shallow pettiness that often marks the architects of inhuman global horrors. Bush’s Blair House snub might make a future edition of "Presidential Anecdotes," but it’s unlikely to stay long in the news. Still, I think it is, in its way, as revealing of Bush’s character as the state torture of innocents.
The Sufi poet, Rumi, wrote, "This being human is a guest house." His point is that we should welcome as guests into the houses of our lives not just our friends, but our enemies; not just happiness, but sadness; not just joy, but meanness, too. Rumi’s not writing about etiquette, not advising his readers on how to win friends or influence people. It’s about "being human."
Being human is a guest house. Blair House is the official state guest house of the president. It turns out that Bush’s crony, former Aussie prime minister John Howard, is going to stay in Blair House a night or two during the time the Obamas had hoped to move in (the Obamas checked into the Hays-Adams Hotel, instead, and their children have started school on time). The four adjacent townhouses that now make up Blair House total about 70,000 square feet. It’s bigger than the White House. Mr. Howard must be accompanied by a sizable entourage.
The picture chosen to illustrate this post is by legendary Disney artist Mary Blair. It’s a "Blair House" too, so to speak. Visually, I thought it captured something of the shame of the Blair House incident. Mary’s painting was a conceptual piece for the 1952 Disney short film, "The Little House," about a modest home overrun by modernity and sprawl.
Shadowy figures haul away a saddened little home, it’s eyes shuttered, it’s doors boarded up. Notice, though, that through Mary Blair’s eyes, it’s the little house that seems human while the shadow-figures are made of inhuman, machine-like angles.
Bush is such a shadow-figure, an indistinct shadow at that. It may seem outrageous to say his slight of Obama is somehow equivalent to his atrocities (Iraq, Guantanamo, Katrina) incompetence (Iraq, Guantanamo, Katrina), and greed (the orchestrated theft of billions by his cronies while the global economy collapses). It does, however, reveal his character, and even the goofy pundits tell us that’s what matters to Americans.
Obama, of course, let it go. There was no percentage in pounding on the door from outside when he’ll be in charge of the guest list soon enough.
Bush was successful in a political era that swamped fundamental elements of human relationships (kindness, reciprocity, empathy) in a modern orgy of carelessness, greed, hatred, and the callous disregard of every "Other" on the planet. It’s not unlike how the Little House was surrounded by modern urban sprawl and blight.
Bush’s slight was, in all ways, a small thing. Like the man himself. Why not let it go the way Obama has? Isn’t Bush already history? He is, but not his kind. Remember.
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