4/26/2013

A More Realistic Bush Museum:
The highlights of the new George W. Bush Library and Abattoir of History are many. The building itself is shaped like a giant hand with a middle finger thrusting out, obviously pointing towards the heavens, where the former president found the strength to deal with the many crises of his two terms in office. The statues out front of drunken sisters Barbara and Jenna Bush welcome you inside because, indeed, what is life but a party?

- The first space is the "How-the-Fuck-Did-This-Guy-Become-President" Room, and it deals with Bush's early years. Exhibits include the megaphone Bush used as a school cheerleader, a pile of cocaine and bottle and bottles of tequila, and, of course, a wrecked car or two. You'll learn about how Bush succeeded in destroying nearly every business he ever came near, except for the Texas Rangers, which didn't require him to play an active role. You'll gaze in wonder, perhaps nodding and thinking, "How the fuck did this guy become president? Sure, maybe governor of Texas because, well, fuck, it's Texas. But the whole goddamn country? Twice?" Then you see the final glass case: stacks of cash from the Bush family's overseas accounts.

- The next room lets you have fun recounting ballots from Florida. What kind of mark is that? How's that chad hanging? You get to figure it out. Be careful though. You have a timer on you and before you're done, rowdy GOP operatives will appear on a screen to distract you and an animatronic William Rehnquist comes rushing in to put an end to it.

- The heart of the Abattoir of History is the Chamber of Horrors. Here, wax figures represent the various victims of George W. Bush's belief in the greatness of the United States.

You get to stand in front of a bed that contains a brain-dead Terri Schiavo. Oh, wait. That's not a wax figure. It actually is Terri Schiavo, secretly kept alive by machines to remind us that only God can decide who lives and dies.

Further in the Chamber of Horrors, you'll see the Lab of Scientists, a diorama showing people who have studied subjects like medicine and climate attempting to solve the problems that plague humanity. Never fear: Dr. Stem Cell and Professor Inconvenient Truth won't get far attempting to kill snowflake babies in order to fill the ozone layer or whatever it is they're doing. George W. Bush will stop them from their "reality-based" work.

The Titty Room will remind you of the important breasts of the Bush Administration: the boobs on the statue of Justice that Attorney General John Ashcroft had covered and the national scandal of Janet Jackson's pierced nipple fleetingly displayed on television. These things mattered because the children.

On we push into the Chamber, and it gets a little more grotesque here. There's a display of a flooded Canal Street in New Orleans. Yes, sure, there's an alligator about to eat the corpse of that black woman, but it still feels like the Big Easy.

And then there's the display of dead Iraqis, who were Shocked and Awed and Surged and Fallujahed into loving America. Never fear: it's the George W. Bush Library. You won't have to see any bodies of Americans. Yes, there is a re-creation of Saddam Hussein's execution, but, no, Osama bin Laden isn't here because, you know, who really spends time on him?

- The Subjects Is Hard Room is devoted to George W. Bush's disdain for things like reading and math. There's the daily briefing that said, "Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S." It's still unread after all this time. There's the tax cut bills Bush signed, one of them even after the wars had started. There's Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill's report that said that taxes needed to be raised and spending cut. Next to that is the letter informing O'Neill that he would no longer be needed in the White House.

- There's so many rooms that it would be hard to see them all in one visit. The "Gitmo Yourself" experience lets you put on an orange jumpsuit and get waterboarded, feared up, and forced into stress positions, all while assuring you that you're not being tortured because America doesn't torture. There's Halliburton Hall, devoted to all the money given to contractors and subcontractors for nearly every support aspect of the wars. There's the Wall Street Rules room, which is empty, but there's a check at the end. There's the artifacts room: the flight suit from the Mission Accomplished aircraft carrier landing; the plastic turkey Bush served to troops in Iraq; the dog pillow Tony Blair slept on at the foot of Bush's bed; and the funding promised but never delivered on No Child Left Behind. This is not to mention the interactive exhibits, like Can You Tell When Ari Fleischer Is Lying? (hint: the answer is "Always"), Is That a War Crime? (hint: the answer is always "No"), How Would You Punish Joseph Wilson?, and Would You Call the Air Around Ground Zero Safe? (Christine Todd Whitman gives a thumbs up). Of course, there's a bunch of t-ball pictures.  And a piece of the fallen Twin Towers because Never Forget.

- The final room is a simple space. Rows of chairs are aligned in front of a screen. In the center of the seat is a dildo molded, in detail, on Karl Rove's penis. You are asked to position yourself so that the dildo enters your anus, the better to feel like an American during the early years of the new millennium. On the screen, a series of people tell you how misunderstood George W. Bush is: Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Jack Abramoff, Scooter Libby, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and more.

Next to your chair is a small whip. That is for people who voted for Bush at least once. They are encouraged to beat themselves, leaving scars and welts on their back, so that they walk out bleeding, asses reamed, in order to remember all the harm they did to the rest of us.