Word: midlands
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...speeches fit the man and some don't. This one did. Bush's inaugural was hyperpoetic, filled with rococo imagery of "ghosts in the storm" and "travelers in Jericho." This time, it was plainspoken like the man: A little bit funny, a little bit tough. It was Andover and Midland. It had West Texas touches of humor but also echoes of Bush's grandfather, Connecticut sdenator Prescott Bush. When Dubya said of America "to whom much is given much is expected," he could have been talking about himself and his own privileged background. His talk about the nobility of government...
George ("Georgie," "Little George," "Bushtail," "Tweeds," "Lip," "Temporary," "Bombastic Bushkin," "Dubya") Bush knows from nicknames. As in Little Italy or Compton, there must have been something about the tightly knit Wasp community of Midland, Texas, some unique social condition that encouraged the cultivation of nicknames, because everyone had one. From his father George ("Poppy") Bush, the war hero with one of those curiously effeminate preppie nicknames (like "Bunny" and "Pinkie"), to Barbara ("Bar") Bush (no one dared stray farther from the source name), to brother John Ellis ("Jeb") Bush's acronym of a name, to family friends "Spider" and "Wemus...
...bequeathed his son the door-opening, legacy-honoring, line-cutting, fund-raising functionality of a prominent surname. And perhaps it was because of Dubya's early recognition of the power of names (he would later brag that "Bush" was his most valuable asset) that in the dusty backyards of Midland tract houses, he honed his skill at coining them for others...
...first name seems an unlikely response from Freddy Boy or Big George, who have no choice but to either endure the folksy nomenclature or, putting the best face on it, play into the implied closeness, as if the President and they go way, way back to the sandlots of Midland...
...Texas Black Tie & Boots Ball--retro, perhaps, but still honoring the great Inaugural tradition of excess and bad taste. All week long the capital was filled with Halloween Texans, dressed in a way they never would have been at home. They sold out of full-length furs in Midland, Texas; for those who had never seen a ranch, $450 Stetsons were selling briskly at the Ritz-Carlton, where the chef was whipping up rattlesnake nachos and Dubya's favorite, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, was going...