Obviously, this is a doctored photo. The Bushes weren't REALLY fishing in New Orleans' 9th ward. (The water was far to toxic and full of ecoli.) I wanted to share this, though, because the sentiment behind it is true enough, even if the contents aren't factual. It's worth making a distinction between different kinds of truths. Physical, factual, literal truth is only one kind of truth, and while valuable, can only reaveal so much. There's another kind of truth, more emotional, more human; what Tim O'Brian in his Pulitzer-prize nominated novel, The Things They Carried, called story truth. In that sense, this photo is very true. Did W catch a, what kind of fish is that, anyway?, in downtown N.O. while people where scavenging for basic necessities? No, but he's consistently ignored the plight of millions of underpriveledged Americans for years, while at the same time taking more vacations than any other president in history. While hundreds of children across the country die every day from curable diseases because they have no access to health care, W plays golf. While hundreds of thousands of working Amercians loose their jobs to foreign outsourcing because W gives tax cuts to companies like Walmart that purchase all their goods from overseas, W is at his ranch, riding. Or at Camp David, fishing. Or somewhere, doing something, that in no way involves doing his job. The photo neatly and sucinctly expresses the truth that W is a spoiled rich boy who plays games while his fellow citizens struggle for their very lives.
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