So I am sitting on the couch in my family room watching my son watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when I comment on the recent news articles revealing that former POTUS George Herbert Walker Bush is an accomplished painter with a penchant for painting himself in the nude.
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“You mean he stood there looking at himself in a mirror?” My son asked.
“Yes, I suppose he did,” I responded.
After a short silence my son opined:
“Well, that makes sense.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Okay, let’s say you are a former conservative Republican President who likes to paint nudes,” my son says.
“Okay,” I respond. “let’s say that.”
“Well, then your possibilities are limited,” my son concludes.
“How so?” I ask.
“Have you seen Barbara Bush?” my son asks.
“His wife?”
“Yes.”
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“Oh,” I said, granting the point.
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UPDATE:
I found out later that it is was recently revealed that it is George Bush the Younger (the one who started two long wars but didn’t pay for them and very nearly brought down the global economy), not George Bush the Elder (the one who scoffed at his critics’ complaints that he lacked foresight by referring to it as “that vision thing”) who painted and presumably still paints himself nude.
I didn’t inform my son of my error. I value any exercise in critical thinking and, based on even invalid data his conclusion was admirable.
And it is very likely that the younger Bush paints himself nude because his daddy did it, too, and the younger Bush is competing with him artistically.
The following photo is of a painting obtained by hackers of the younger Bush’s painting efforts. It is a bit creepy because it is clearly derived from a photograph, which means George has a collaborator who takes pictures of him in the nude:
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The elder Bush was a better president (he fought Gulf War I, neutralized Saddam Hussein without creating a quagmire the US could not exit from). The odds are the elder Bush is a better painter.
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