Of Hospitals and Bush Jokes

Sadly, I once again find myself blogging from my son’s hospital room.  He is back in with seemingly the same mystery illness as last year, and at present we don’t appear any closer to finding the cause.  I don’t think there is anything worse than seeing your child struggle and look helpless.  It is just awful, and a totally crushing feeling.

Being a parent really is the hardest thing you can do.  The challenges are incredible, though I think it is also the most rewarding thing you can do.  These kind of situations really put things into perspective and show you what is genuinely important in your life, and it isn’t work or comics, I’ll tell you that much.

I really don’t care for hospitals and I find myself becoming all too familiar with them lately.  A big reason why I am always having trouble financially is because I’m always paying off medical bills.  It is outrageous.  I imagine this overnight stay and testing plus the earlier ER visit will cost me 2 to 3 grand easily.  And that’s with somewhat decent medical insurance from my work!

So in addition to sitting here worrying about my son’s health I have to worry about money.  Ugh.  But you didn’t come here to read my sob story.  You came here to read about Bush jokes!

First thing, no I did not vote for Bush in 2004, so this one is not based on me.  It is based on an experience I had, though.  While attending West Valley junior college I had a classmate who was wearing a Bush button in support of his reelection.  My web design teacher was the one who started to spout off about how it was so interesting that to be a young rebel this boy had to support the conservative.

I never really cared for this teacher.  He was a dweeb in every sense of the word.  His notion here struck me as his usual brand of stupid.  So I, much like Filo here, pointed out the more glaring flaws in his logic.  I know his point was that young people were pretty unanimously against Bush, and I suspect he was basing that largely off of working with young people in the Bay Area, which is well known for its extreme liberalism.

So obviously this conversation stuck with me, and I thought it would make a good follow up to the earlier Bush jokes.  We’re only 11 comics into this series and 4 of them have been about President Bush!  And I know making fun of Bush is not exactly current as we find ourselves some 5 years removed from his reign of terror (war on).  But these aren’t actually Bush jokes.

These are jokes about the characters that are using their various reactions to growing up in the Bush presidency as a context.  President Bush had a very strong impact on me, and was a key part of my formative years, so that is the way I’m trying to discuss him here. Whether it was my initial support of him as I first got into politics or joining the throngs of people who opposed him after facts started coming out about Iraq, it was a big part of my life and the culture that surrounded me.

At one point I even pitched a comic strip where Bush would be the main character to the UC Berkeley newspaper.  I had a lot to say about them man and his politics.  So I guess that’s why I’m still talking about him today.  In some ways it feels like things were never really resolved.  This guy was omnipresent in my life for so long, and it felt like he had a lot to answer for, then his time was up and he was basically just gone.

And no one knew what to rebel against anymore, and we had nothing to unite us (except maybe the overwhelming depression of a recession).  And in some sick way I miss President Bush.

That being said I don’t anticipate doing many more Bush related jokes in the near future.  Well, maybe one more!