Pretty, But Stupid

I’m in Aruba for several days on business. (I know, I know … it’s not a vacation, but as business trips go, it beats the hell out of Detroit.) Aruba is large enough—over 100,000 residents—to have several daily news publications, so this morning when I sat down to breakfast after an early swim in the Caribbean, I spent some time browsing Aruba Daily (not online) and Aruba Today. Both have a helping of local news, heavily fortified with stories from the international wire services.

(As an aside, Aruba Today’s comics page is of particular interest. The page offers Foxtrot, Cathy, Garfield, The Boondocks, For Better or Worse, and Doonesbury, all of which are clearly JPG images downloaded from the web. What’s fun is that each strip is from the first week of February … indeed, in today’s Aruba Today Doonesbury Alex is considering “back up” candidates should Dean falter. Hope she had one. Perhaps there’s a very brief copyright on comics, after which you can steal them from the syndicates? Just wondering …)

Regardless, as I’m reading Aruba Daily I come across an AFP profile of Laura Bush, posted online here at Channel NewsAsia. The article begins typically, noting her recent appearance on Leno, and offering some standard backstory on when she married George, etc. Then the author writes:

Small, full-figured, with sparkling eyes and an engaging smile Laura Bush lacks the solid and reassuring substance of her mother-in-law, Barbara Bush, herself an American First Lady from 1989 to 1993.

Nor does she possess the intellectual reknown wife of former president Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, who went on to be elected US senator from New York.

Born and raised in the south Texas middle class, wife of the former governor of Texas who became president of the United States, Laura Bush is a study in contrast with the wife of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, Bush’s Democratic opponent for the White House.

Teresa Kerry, born to a Portuguese family in Mozambique, is a billionaire heiress who speaks at least five languages.

Ladies and gentlemen, Laura Bush: Mother, wife, teacher of children, keeper of books, First Lady of the United States, and in the eyes of the AFP, pretty, but stupid.