George, ya big ape

Katie McKy - Raw Story Columnist
Published: Wednesday May 10, 2006

In the twenties, the It Girl du jour, the one coiffed with Jean Harlow hair, would plant her hands on her hips, and sling slang like, "Ya big ape." That descriptor was saved for very virile fellas that would grab a girl's wrist--and the girl wouldn't mind. Bookish, twittering types were never graced with "big ape." That's because the biggest ape, the gorilla, is a bundle of glower, brawn, and brow ridge. In those movies, necky geeky guys were more like macaques that, in times of stress, shrieked and tossed shit rather than scowl and dismember. Sometimes, the geeky guys served up chimpanzee theatrics. Unable to do high-speed back flips like Cheetah, they ran in high-speed circles.

There's a reason those platinum silky protagonists preferred big apes. We're wired that way. We behave much like other apes, such as dispensing wanton violence to induce stress and dispensing affection to dissipate stress. Wanna know your thyself? Watch gorillas.

We are especially gorillaish in times of stress. Gorillas under stress orient around the silverback, their elderly alpha. The gorilla band takes its cues from their big ape. The band expects their silverback to be silverbackial, which is their equivalent of FDR's presidential proclamation: We have nothing to fear but fear itself. That FDR, who was physically weak, served as a silverback, demonstrates a difference between gorillas and us. In a troop of gorillas, only a physically dominant male can be a silverback. For humans, gender and office don't preclude a person from serving as a silverback-or being presidential, even if they aren't a president.

Bush is a president, but he's not presidential. We saw this on 9-11, when he was fawnlike: paralyzed by the headlights of history. America was being attacked. Americans were dying. Bush went wide-eyed as a pet goat and ran for cover.

Contrast this with Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Churchill. Neither are presidents nor gorillas, but both are presidential and silverbacks. London was bombed and they bore it. But Bush can't bear or won't bear verbal bombs. And he can't be, or won't be presidential.

Of course, Bush has fewer opportunities to practice what he might term being the presidentialator. RoveCo has silenced direct dissent in a way that makes one wonder if he has KBG on his CV. With no daily opportunities to directly disagree with the president, contrary perspectives are disseminated through cracks, such as a funeral and the White House Correspondents Association dinner. Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery and Stephen Colbert both stood before Bush and said things that flayed his skin-thin smirky façade and revealed his frosty face. W wasn't alone. Laura also visibly iced up. And during Colbert's report on the sad state of the union, some Bush aides and supporters left.

Some argue for respect for the office of the presidency, regardless of performance. I argue that those concerned with honoring the office should be dismayed by George and Laura, for they disrespect their offices by refusing to be calm cool silverbacks. Now, if I wore Bush's britches, I wouldn't want to be sighted in the crosshairs of Colbert's irony. And I wouldn't want Rev. Lowrey, who cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and who led the Selma to Montgomery March to George Wallace, to find me morally insufficient. But seated before Colbert and Lowrey, George and Laura had a job to do: to appear presidential (or First Ladylike). It was a job that they didn't do. Being presidential is a compilation of affections that elude George and Laura. It is a matter of demeanor: more persona than person. But George and Laura pander to their persons. Rather than sit, nod, and smile, as befits the office, George pouts. And Laura sulks.

Contrast this with their predecessors, who faced greater adversity than Colbert, the court jester. There is FDR. Bush's was tested on September 11th, 2001. Towers fell, taking about 3,000 people with them. But throughout 1944, on average, 30,000 people were killed...everyday. This is worth repeating: Everyday, 30,000 people were burned, bombed, gassed, stabbed, and shot.

And FDR didn't contest Iran. One of his adversaries was Nazi Germany, which was building the bomb and a transatlantic plane to drop it on NYC. To even survive 1944, FDR had to politically survive the Great Depression. And post-Pearl Harbor, war was always just offshore: in 1942, folks could stand on Miami and Atlantic Beaches and watch torpedoed American cargo ships burn. That's because Nazi submarines parked outside our harbors.

But FDR, that great silverback, bore it, even though consecutive terms chipped away at him. In 1944, he contemplated his death, which was wise, for he was dying: imploding from high-blood pressure. So, what did he do? He behaved like a president. He behaved like a silverback. He did not want to wage his final campaign for the presidency. But he undertook it to give the American people continuity of leadership. He did it to finish the war. Then, on October 22, 1944, he rode in an open car in a cold drenching rain through New York City. It was misery for the crippled silverback, but FDR understood that Americans needed to see an ebullient president. So, he pretended. He smiled and waved on a day when he'd rather have been laid in bed. Some say that that ride hastened his end, thus fulfilling one ancient meaning of leadership, which is "to forth and die." But damn, he was presidential.

And the former Jackie Kennedy proved that you don't have to sport exterior plumbing and brawn to be a silverback. In the finest tradition of silverbacks, she stood before a nation's gaze and embodied grace and resolve. She never forgot that her troop of hairless apes was watching and that they hinged their courage to hers. On November 25, 1963, she whispered something to John-John, who then saluted the carriage that carried his father's body. Only 3 days before, Jackie had had her husband's brains and blood on her dress and body.

"It's my husband," that female silverback told those that tried to deny her entry to the operating room in Dallas. "His blood, his brains are all over me."

That was so because, in transit, she had held his head in such a way so that the bulk of his brains wouldn't slide out. Even at that bloody moment, she remembered that she was the First Lady, a silverback, who had a duty to decorum and to country. So, she composed herself and composed something to say.

Here's a piece of that: "Don't let it be forgot that for one brief shining moment there was Camelot."

She felt, in quoting mere movie lyrics, like she'd been insufficient in her role.

Later, she wrote: "I'm so ashamed of myself. Jack...everything he ever quoted was Greek or Roman...."

That's the standard of decorum that should serve as examples for George and Laura, but there are Republican presidents that they can also emulate. For example, shortly after John Hinckley shot President Reagan, a nurse took his hand.

The Gipper quipped, "Does Nancy know about us?"

And when he saw first Nancy, he lifted a line from Jack Dempsey, who had said to his wife the night he was beaten by Gene Tunney, "Honey, I forgot to duck."

What George and Laura forgot and forget are their roles. A preacher preached to them and a comedian poked them, but rather than hold tight to persona and smile, they revealed, once again, that they don't comprehend leadership and role. They haven't a clue about grace under pressure. They should take Air Force One to Busch Gardens, find a silverback, and take notes.