Kitty Kelley Story About *

[TomClash]

So the little pussy goes to Andover after his jaunt at the Kincaid School in Texas and he receives an assignment in English class to write about an emotional experience. So he writes about his little sister Robin, who died tragically of leukemia at Sloan-Kettering in NYC at age 3, God rest her little soul.

He writes "tears ran down my cheeks" but having used "tears" many times in the essay he searches for a synonym in a thesaurus Mommy gave him. He comes up with "lacerates ran down my cheeks." He turns the paper in and gets a ZERO. At 15 and in the 10th grade, he couldn't tell the verb "tears" from the noun "tears."

This story, along with the fact that Neil and Marvin were both left back a grade, must be the reason he wanted "no child left behind."

[Dogmudgeon]

1. It was reported in "Fortunate Son", too

--bkl

[molly]

2. LOL!

I've got the book just have not finished it.

[BlueNomad]

3. I am reading the book now

...those guys are all dopes...I am serious..I am with Jack Germond (Fat Man Fed Up) when he asserts that both Bush Sr and Junior are stupid and exceedingly arrogant. Bad genes.

[Stephanie]

4. Neil and Marvin both left back?

Consequence of in-breeding?

[JusticeForAll]

5. This was printed in JH Hatfields "Fortunate Son" n/t

[BigBigBear]

6. Did I mention

I went to high school with Marvin?

[olddem43]

7. Any stories about him?

[pretzel4gore]

9. really? you're one of THEM !!

gotta get the eyeshades!!

[BigBigBear]

15. Not really

He played on the golf team with my roommate. He was a decent golfer from what I remember - I was terrible.

We knew each other, but weren't really friends. Andover was pretty thick with kids of the wealthy and politically well-connected, and that crowd tended to stick together. I came from a middle class family, got in and got out by the skin of my teeth.

I will say this - the kids with famous or wealthy pedigree tended to have an easier trip through PA - they got flunked out less, they got busted for pot or drinking less, and always had Ivy League spots waiting for them. I'd safely put Marvin in that category. Wealthy and famous students tended to have wealthy and famous parents, which is generally healthy for the endowment...if you get my drift.

I remember him as a bit of a loudmouth, not terribly bright, and certainly not shy about the blueness of his blood. He liked to party, but we all did. Bottom line: another rich kid from Connecticut in Lacoste shirts and topsiders, with a big deal Dad in the government. No one was worried he'd have a tough ride through his post-Andover life.

[highplainsdem]

8. Love that story.

I'd read it in FORTUNATE SON, too, but I'm glad Kelley included it. By the way, does she include the story told to an audience by one of W's younger brothers (think it was Neil) a few years ago about how W, then 16, shot at his little brother with a BB gun? Can't recall whether W actually hit him, but just the information that he was shooting at his brother then shows that he was already a classic example of arrested development by the age of 16.

I've barely started reading Kelley's book -- up to page 43, though I did glance at some of the stuff on W in the later sections of the book. The early history of the family is interesting, though. There seems to be a family history of distorting military achievements. We all know about W being AWOL and lying about it, and about Poppy having told a very questionable story about what actually happened when he bailed out of his plane in WWII. But Kelley describes how Prescott Bush, W's grandfather, got his hometown paper to report during WWI that he'd heroically and singlehandedly saved three Allied leaders, General Ferdinand Foch, Sir Douglas Haig, and and General John Pershing, as Bush was supposedly guiding them about that sector of the western front. "Suddenly Captain Bush noticed a shell coming directly for them. He shouted a warning, suddenly drew his bolo knife, stuck it up as he would a ball bat, and parried the blow, causing the shell to glance off to the right. The three generals marveled at the exploit." That story was printed on the front page of the Ohio State Journal on August 8, 1918. A week later it was picked up by the New Haven Journal-Courier, calling attention to the "heroic" Yale graduate. A month later Bush's mother wrote to the Ohio paper to retract the story and apologize, saying her son was "dreadfully troubled that a letter written in a spirit of fun should have been misinterpreted." But the New Haven paper never printed a retraction (maye Prescott's mother didn't convey his apology to them), and that silly story is still attached to the entry about Prescott Bush in the yearbook for the Yale class of 1917 in the university library.

I also read that Prescott was 6'4". That means W grew up feeling like a very little man next to his grandfather as well as father. Which helps explain his inferiority complex and overcompensation for it...

[TomClash]

12. I'm only about halfway through the book.

The more you read about 41 and 43, the more interesting it gets.

[joeprogressive]

10. I can't wait to get to that part

I just got to the part where his sister died. This is very sad and is ironic considering it is a disease that has the potential for a cure with the help of stem cell research. Even Nancy could put aside politics for practicality. Bush could very well be the dumbest person to ever hold a national office.

[txindy]

13. Have you read how *'s parents played golf the day after *'s sister died?

Their 3 year old daughter dies and they play golf the next day with Bar's father?! Those are not normal people. My mother read that and any and all respect she once had for that family flew out the window at warp-speed. She was engrossed in the book (Kelley's) after that and cannot believe she ever liked or trusted a single one of them.

[auburngrad82]

11. It's stories like this that make me ashamed that he's our pResident

I really believe that the man is illiterate. The electronic devices that feed his words to him (rather than reading a teleprompter) and the video footage of him "reading" the book to the kindergarteners on 9/11 (HE didn't read the book; he held a copy of it while the teacher read the book) sure make it look like he can't read.

Maybe that's why his mom has always supported literacy programs.

[highplainsdem]

14. Found the BB gun story

that I mentioned in my earlier post here. It isn't in Kelley's book, though, as far as I can tell by checking the index under W and Neil's names.

Neil's told this story in front of more than one audience, and he's given two different accounts of how old his brother was then. What I heard first was that W was 16 at the time, and one of the news stories I found (at http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0%2C1249%2C375013414%2C00.html ) does have Neil mentioning that his brother was that old when this happened. But another time, talking to a class of second graders, Neil said W was 14 then.

This is from the news story at http://www.richmond.com/output.cfm?id=1416145 :

He also dished on his famous older siblings, Dubya and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

For instance, the audience howled with laughter when he regaled them with a tale from when George W. was 14 and he was 6. The president-to-be took his brand-new BB gun and lined up his younger siblings down a long hallway and told them he'd give them a 10-second head start. "I was running as fast as I can with my little lightweight summer PJs on and then 7 8 9 10… BOOM! I felt it on my right cheek."

It was "a really stupid thing" his older brother did, but Neil was stupider, he said, for letting himself be the "guinea pig" in the first place.


Whether W was 14 or 16, though, this was a disturbing game for him to be playing with his younger siblings.

[hedda_foil]

16. Neil told this story to SECOND GRADERS?????

What fabulous role models these bastards are!

On edit to note this incredibly sad comment from Silverado Neilsie:

Bush mused. "I loved having any attention that I could get from my brother when he was that much older than me. You know, that was just our way of showing affection."

[leftofthedial]

17. that just castigates my heart in to (sic)

er, hic.

freaking moron.

[ladybugg33]

18. It's in the genes. They are rich but dumb!

Happens all the time.

[A Brand New World]

19. Stealing what they thought was Geronimo's skull got to me!

Prescott back in the 20's or something like that (it's been a few weeks since I read the book) went out to steal Geronimo's skull as a trophy for the Skull & Bones group at Yale. Could not believe that they would stoop so low as to desicrate a grave. Come to find out though it was a 10 year old's skull but Kitty Kelly made it sound like the skull is still on display at Yale. If I went out and grave-robbed, guaranteed I'd end up in jail. How in the world have these Bush's always gotten away with the crap they pull?? Always, even in the 1920's!!