George W. Bush's Anti-War Anthems
What’s the president been up to during his five-week vacation in Texas, other than clearing brush and ducking Cindy Sheehan? Could he be working on an album? Probably not, but given how cool some of tracks available for download at
Thepartyparty.com have turned out, Bush could have quite a career in music, as long as he’s working with the right DJ, like Rx, the person responsible for cutting-and-pasting snippets of Bush’s public speeches and setting them to music.
Bush’s faux folksy delivery becomes something between spoken word and rap in the original tunes, like the danceable but ridiculous “Dick is a Killer,” about Bush’s relationship with his VP, or “Birthday,” in which he acts as hype man for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It’s the cover songs that are the true highlights though, for the simple cognitive dissonance that occurs when you hear Bush earnestly “singing” upbeat remixes of antiwar anthems like U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and John Lennon’s “Imagine” (with the chorus from Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” thrown in). Talk about the lion lying down with the lamb.
Rx has Bush indicting himself throughout, as if we’re hearing the good angel on the president’s shoulder rocking out after the devil on his other shoulder has gone to bed. “I don’t see how you can lead this country if you say war would make this world a more peaceful place,” we hear Bush declare on “Who’s the Nigga?,” “That’s kind of a fucked up mentality.” Well, the president would know best, wouldn’t he?
