While we weren’t paying them any attention, the Bush twins (Jenna and Gob), turned 25.
To mark the occasion, the girls got robbed, got drunk (we’re just guessing about this one, but it explains a lot), and may or may not have been asked to leave the country. (Another country, that is.)
Here’s the gist of the report:
Amid a growing barrage of front-page headlines, U.S. embassy officials “strongly suggested” President Bush’s twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara Bush, cut short their trip to Buenos Aires because of security issues, U.S. diplomatic and security sources tell ABC News.
But the girls have stayed on, celebrating their 25th birthday over the weekend and producing even more headlines about their activities.
Officials say the media coverage upstaged publicity plans for the new U.S. Ambassador Anthony Wayne, who had only recently arrived in the country.
Neither the White House nor the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires responded to requests for comment.
The Argentinean press blitz followed a report on “The Blotter” last week that Barbara Bush’s purse and cell phone were stolen last weekend while dining at the popular San Telmo outdoor marketplace despite being guarded by the Secret Service.
Stories of the twins’ visit took on wild proportions in the Argentinean press. One tabloid headline had the young women running nude in the hallway of their hotel, a report the hotel staff denied to ABC News.
But watch for the documentary “Presidential Girls Gone Wild,” which will soon be available wherever skanky videos are sold.
According to sources, the U.S. embassy encouraged the two girls to cut their stay short because the added attention was making their security very difficult.
But to the dismay and anger of some U.S. embassy and security staff, the girls stayed on.
Thursday night, an ABC News producer was able to walk into their hotel unchecked and engage Barbara Bush in conversation while she checked her e-mail on a computer in the lobby.
A truly enterprising reporter would have told us what kind of e-mail Barbara gets. But since ABC news fell down on the job, here’s our recreation of the subjects of the contents of Barbara’s inbox:
URGENT REPLY NEEDED: Help Me Claim Billions in Argentine Nazi Gold, and You Can Keep a Third of It
Re: My Secret Service Agent is Such a Dork!
Re: Where Do You Get a Drink in This Town?
We’re sure you can think of some others.
But back to the story:
Jenna sat talking with friends on a sofa nearby. No Secret Service agents were anywhere to be seen in the lobby, according to ABC News’ Joe Goldman.
And yesterday the Bush twins were spotted at the Sunday soccer matches, wearing team jerseys and sitting in the owner’s box, watching Argentina’s top team Boca Juniors compete. Several games have been canceled due to violence in the crowds this year. In fact, last weekend no spectators were allowed to attend the match other than season ticket holders.
Reports indicating that Grandma Bar suggested that the twins visit Argentina without Secret Service agents so they could watch a soccer match there with with that nice Diego Maradona, are probably unfounded, since although the girls have been an embarrassment to the family, Bar would have no family left if she started eliminating people for that reason.
Sources tell ABC News the twins plan to stick to their original itinerary and stay in Buenos Aires until Thursday.
But wait, there’s more! It seems that the embassy has denied declaring the girls persona non grata, and buying them one-way tickets to Peru.
The U.S. Embassy in Argentina rejected reports that it had told President George W. Bush’s twin daughters to leave the country after a widely publicized purse-snatching incident. [...]
ABC News reported on its Web site Argentine officials confirmed last week that one of Bush’s daughters had her purse stolen in San Telmo, a neighborhood popular with tourists. The incident led to teasing by Argentine media about the twins’ seemingly ineffective Secret Service bodyguards.
“We have seen a report from news sources stating that embassy officials strongly suggested that President Bush’s daughters curtail their visit in Argentina,” the U.S. Embassy said in a written statement. “This is false.
“The embassy welcomes the visit and has provided close support and cooperation,” the statement read.
Translation: “We LOVE having the President’s wild, uncooperative, hard-living daughters here, creating international good will and enhancing American prestige by ditching their guards, getting mugged, and having wild parties in their hotel. And we especially enjoy the fact that this all occurred under our auspices. We only hope that brother Neil and Jeb’s brood show up here for Christmas.”
Look, I know they’re bimbos, and I know they’re still well within Daddy’s “young and irresponsible” grace period, and I accept that they should be allowed to do more or less the same things normal young people do without being singled out for it because of who their father is (though don’t argue with me about the ambivalence of that–because I’m perfectly willing to change my mind on it. Children of privilege get way more breaks and should have correspondingly more expected of them–this kind of slack is why the jackass who is our current president never bothered to grow up, in the shelter of Poppy’s wealth and power and friends he never had to), but nonetheless, I think at a bare minimum they need to be expected to not cause diplomatic incidents.
Sure, it’s terribly unfair and all, seeing as how other moronic kids can get drunk in foreign countries without causing a diplomatic incident, but on the other hand, other moronic kids don’t require or expect, much less get, taxpayer dollars from the country they’re vacationing in spent on their defense from assorted muggers and footpads.
Has no one ever, seriously, sat these idiots down and explained that when abroad, they are ambassadors for their country? Because they fucking *are*. In ways far more concrete than any of the rest of us would be abroad. Why the hell don’t they know this? I’m not going to ask why their father didn’t explain this to them, because obviously he doesn’t get it either. But fucking *somebody* should have.
Meanwhile, let’s guess what Dubya’s response to this was. “Where do those little foreign people get off, telling my American daughters where they can go and what they can do? We’re Americans, dammit, and we’ll go where we want to! And they can shut the fuck up and be grateful we’re even spending money in their pissant little country!”
(Truthfully, I would expect him to use a racial slur in place of “foreigners”, but even putting myself that close to whatever passes for the man’s thought process made me ill.)
And no one will bother to stand up to him and explain that hey, dipshit, you’re the fucking President. They are your fucking children. When the president and his family are rude to foreign states, it is not the same thing as calling a reporter a major asshole. It is serious, and it is something you don’t do, because the ramifications can include far more serious things than snarky headlines in the tabloids.
But then, I still am amazed, even after six years of this crap, and Neil and Marvin’s antics before this, that anyone would *have* to say this. They are a political dynasty. Why the hell don’t they *know* this stuff? The kid down the street knows it, and he was raised in a two room apartment and will very likely never leave the country. But I suppose that’s the answer. If the kid down the street declined to leave a country upon its request because his presence was putting strain on its limited resources, he would not be treated with kid gloves by their government nor rescued by ours.
It’s the entitlement of the bullying classes. You can sexually harrass at will, you can engage in racist behavior, you can haze, you can cheat, because no one has the power to challenge you. And the best part is, you don’t even necessarily have to know that you’re doing any of that. It’s just fun and games to you, or worse, business as usual, because you are so insulated from any consequences you don’t even know there *are* consequences.
In fact, if anyone *does* call you on it, you get to be outraged that someone is being rude to you.
Honest to god, I don’t know if the arrogance or the ignorance disgusts me more. I simply can’t be in the same room with people who voted for that man. There’s no way for me to regard them anymore as anything other than selfish, shallow, meanminded, stupid bigots.
I apologize for the rant, but this shit makes me so angry. They can’t even pretend that appearances matter while they fuck up the world, which is the bare minimum I used to expect of them, some vague, gasping, tiny whisper of recognition that what they wanted to do was base and immoral. They won’t even bother with that anymore. After all, why should they? Who’s going to make them? Who even could?
Left by D. Sidhe on November 28th, 2006