Phillip Roth: 'Bush Is Too Horrendous to Be Forgotten'

[n2doc]

SPIEGEL talks to American author Philip Roth about growing old, why George W. Bush is the worst American president ever and why he never gives out his cell phone number.


http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1091447,00.jpg.

Philip Roth, who will be 75 in March, is one of America's most critically acclaimed living writers. His 1969 novel "Portnoy's Complaint" brought him fame, and he went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for 1997's "American Pastoral."
Many of his novels feature Roth's fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman. Zuckerman appears again in Roth's latest work, "Exit Ghost," where he returns to New York after many years of seclusion in rural New England.

SPIEGEL talked to Roth about "Exit Ghost," the US election and the pleasures of rural life.

Snip:
SPIEGEL: What will remain of the current president, George W. Bush? Could he be forgotten once he leaves office?
Roth: He was too horrendous to be forgotten. There will be an awful lot written about this. And there's a lot to be written about the war. There's a lot to be written about what he did with Reaganism, since he went much further than Reagan. So he won't be forgotten. Someone has said he's the worst American president we've ever had. I think that?s true.

SPIEGEL: Why?

Roth: Well, the biggest thing would be the war, the deceptions surrounding the entrance into the war. The absolute cynicism that surrounds the deception. The cost of the war, the Treasury and the lives of the Americans. It?s hideous. There is nothing quite like it. The next thing would be the attitude towards global warming, which is a global crisis, and they were utterly indifferent, if not hostile, to any attempt to address it. And so on and so on and so on and so on. So he?s done a lot of harm.

SPIEGEL: Since your book is set in that week during the 2004 elections, can you explain why Americans voted for Bush once again?

Roth: I suspect it was the business of being in a war and not wanting to change, and political stupidity. Why does anybody elect anybody? I thought highly of John Kerry when he began, but he couldn?t stand up against Bush. The Democrats aren't brutes, which is too bad, because the Republicans are brutes. Brutes win.

more:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,534018-2,00.html

He has more to say about the candidates as well...

[Adsos Letter]

1. OT (sort of) but...

his short story "The Conversion of the Jews" was great...a great author.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Like a lot of liberal and leftist intellectuals, he doesn't have a clue about stolen elections.

He'd rather believe that Americans are uninformed and stupid, and vote for brutes.

Head in the clouds, tending his veggie garden.

Sorry, I'm just furious at these UNINFORMED, lofty-minded celebrity thinkers, who don't bother to look into the facts and spout off their anti-poor, anti-working class opinions on the basis of NO information about what Americans really think-- (56% opposed to the Iraq War, Feb 03, NYT (other polls 54-55%), and a whopping, unprecedented 70% opposed to the war now-- and NO information about what has been done to disenfranchise us. He clearly doesn't know that electronic voting machines run on 'trade secret,' proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls, were fast-tracked across the country, during the 2002 to 2004 period, with a $3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle from the Anthrax Congress, rendering the U.S. voting system completely non-transparent and easily and undetectably riggable. And because he doesn't know this, he doesn't ask why it was done. How could anybody do this? How could the Democratic leadership let it happen?

People like Roth could do so much good in helping us restore our democracy, but don't bother to find out what's been going on. And I'm sure they kept this election theft system out of New York--the only state that the Bushites didn't bribe and kneecap into purchasing this expensive, crapass voting machinery (until recently)--for this very reason. Liberal and leftist New Yorkers near the seats of news media and political power would have been up in arms about it, and would have helped to alert the rest of us, when it was being completely black-holed in the news and by our own party leadership.

And now they snottily think we're all stupid lugs who voted for Mr. Codpiece!

[Skittles]

3. there's no denying a lot of people did vote for that piece of shit bush

there is a lot of ignorance in America

[n2doc]

4. correct. In both 00 and 04 they voted 70% for * in my town

Anyone who thinks that the elections were merely "stolen" and all we need are paper ballots to create an invincible democratic majority is deluded. There are a lot of people out there who are brainwashed badly into believing that R=good, D=bad.
In any case the Author is right about Kerry- He didn't fight hard when it came down to Ohio. He rolled over like the good Bonesman he is.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Skittles and n2doc, how do you know who they voted for?

And if you say, because they told you, how do you know it was the majority? Do you know anything about how your votes are counted--or rather not counted? Do you know that with touchscreens there IS no ballot TO count--it's all done inside the "black box" which can produce any totals that the corporate programmers desire, and with optiscans, though they have a ballot, many states do ZERO auditing (handcount of the ballots against the machine totals), and only the best states do an extremely inadequate 1% audit (99% of the ballots are never counted)? So, again, how do you know how they voted?

I've never said that handcounted paper ballots (100% audit) is the be-all and end-all. There are many other things wrong with our election system and our country. But none of them are fixable without transparent elections, by which we empower true representatives of the people to act in our interest. It is the bottom line of democracy. Without transparent elections--vote counting that everyone can see and understand--all other reform is blockaded. And that's just where we're at--all other reform is blockaded. The voting system is the one thing we MUST fix, if we want to unlock the power of democracy to put things right.

[n2doc]

6. Small town texas

I knew many of those folks. Bush signs all over the place. Any Kerry posters were torn down or vandalzed. I'd bet large sums of money that the vote was accurate there.


I'll agree that paper ballots or some other rock solid voting method is needed, badly. But I will turn it around- how do you know they didn't vote for *?? DU is not exactly an average slice of America. I personally feel that given the huge amount of propaganda out there it is amazing that *'s numbers are as LOW as they are!

Another example. In my new job I know a couple, very bright scientists. I had a very depressing conversation with the wife, she was an Obama supporter (which was fine with me) but said that she also thought McCain was fine because he was "Honest". I asked how she knew this and it was apparent that she "knew" this because she had heard it on NPR, PBS and other media outlets. I brought up how he had hired the same guy who smeared him in 00 to run his SC operation and she hadn'd heard of that.

There are a lot of brainwashed people out there.