Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

SLATER: Governor, were you ever arrested after 1968?
BUSH: No.
The drunk driving thing uncaged a whole zoo full of lyin'. Here's a good one from
Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes, fielding reporters' questions minutes after the announcement
of Bush's unfortunate past as a drunk driver. I've added numbers to Karen's response for
easy reference.
QUESTION: Do you know why he was stopped, Karen? Was he driving erratically or anything?
KAREN HUGHES: I believe they—I don't know exactly, no. I don't know. There was no—
there was no incident…there's—I don't know exactly. There was some discussion
that he appeared to have been driving too slow—too slowly.
The real answer? Bush was arrested because he drove into a hedge. That's what the arresting
officer, Calvin Bridges, a former Kennebunkport policeman, told Portland, Maine's Fox-51
reporter Erin Fehlau the day the story broke. According to Fehlau, Bridges said that "he spotted
Bush driving erratically ... [and] says Bush ran off the road into some hedges."
Let's try to get into Karen's head, shall we? First off, it's pretty apparent that she
didn't know. I derived that from the "I don't know exactly, no" (line 1), the "I don't know" (2),
and the "I don't know exactly" (3). Why did she say this three times? I think she was stalling
while her savvy political mind weighed the implications: Hmmm. Drunk driving? Bad.
What's wrong with drunk driving? Kill people. People dead. Very bad. What would be the
least deadly way to drive drunk? Erratically? No. Too fast? NO!!! Too slow? Yes! Too slow.
That's it. "There was some discussion that he appeared to have been driving too slow-too
slowly." That's good.
The media dutifully picked up on this, even following her line of reasoning. As a
columnist in the Washington Times wrote: "As for Mr. Bush, it may be revealing that he was
not speeding like so many people driving under the influence of alcohol, but was in fact,
pulled over by the police because he was driving too slowly." Great job, Karen!
And then there's the cocaine.
Back in 1979, the week after the release of radiation at Three Mile Island, I wrote a
Saturday Night Live sketch with Tom Davis and Jim Downey called "The Amazing Colossal
President." Pres ident Carter visits a nuclear plant during an "event," is irradiated, and grows