W. H. D. Koerner's painting: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”George W. Bush was under the impression that this painting was titled "A Charge to Keep" and used that as the title of his autobiography. However...
It is not a painting of a missionary spreading the gospel but an illustration for a story about a horse thief making his way out of town. Too delicious.
Eli at Firedoglake comments:
Only George W. Bush could look at a con man and see a righteous Christian crusader and kindred spirit. Well, Bush and about 60 million American voters. I think they're starting to catch on, though.Read the whole article. One can only hope the American People wake up and realize the doofus in the Oval Office is not a crusader, he's a liar and thief.
UPDATE:
Fran gives me too much credit. You can read the full tale here (Scott Horton in Harper's, 1/23/2008) and an earlier reporting on the painting here (Sidney Blumenthal writing in Salon om 2007: "From Norman Rockewll to Abu Ghraib").
--the BB
11 comments:
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Ah, but is this not typical of the man? Will anyone dare to reveal the truth to him about the painting?
A Methodist minister by any other name is a horse thief. If you made this up, no one would believe you.
Given how short his fuse is, how foul his mouth, and how badly he treats staff when pissed, I would not want to be the one to inform the ignorant little shit.
I linked to this post... unreal.
From the Harper's piece:
Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him.
I've not heard of the "Tolstoy syndrome" before, but it sounds about right.
Tolstoy certainly had a better way with words.
The Wikipedia article on "confirmation bias" has this:
In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs. It is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference, or as a form of selection bias toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study or disconfirmation of an alternative hypothesis.
Confirmation bias is of interest in the teaching of critical thinking, as the skill is misused if rigorous critical scrutiny is applied only to evidence challenging a preconceived idea but not to evidence supporting it.
The effect is also known as belief bias, belief preservation, belief overkill, hypothesis locking, polarization effect, positive bias, the Tolstoy syndrome, selective thinking, myside bias, Plate pick-up and Morton's demon.
Paul again: back in the day I believe we just called this having blinders on. [Am I really a holdover of the horse and buggy era?]
[Am I really a holdover of the horse and buggy era?]
What does that make me?
Grandmère, you know better than to take on rhetorical questions or pose them.
What it makes us is way to young to know what I am talking about.
How perfectly fitting for the man who would be king. This has made my day.
(I clicked through from FranIAm's blog, and I will be back!)
Welcome, Kimono Hime. I've seen you at Fran's. Visit anytime.
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