Barbara Bush's Ill-Mannered Son

"[H]e curls his lips into a simian oval and flaps his entire mouth open and shut... open and shut..."

International journalists and bloggers alike whooped it up early last week over George W. Bush's groping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and, later, an accidentally "open mike" and video showing Tony Blair pleading with an insouciant George W. Bush about the unfolding tragedy in Lebanon and the West Bank.

What lit a fire under everyone was how Merkel recoiled from Bush's overt sexism and the latter's rather too-familiar, offhand use of a common English epithet for merde. (A BBC news reader tells you the word (with inflection) and shows the video here.)

Much ado about nothing. That's what we say. It can't be news to anyone that Bush is a pig when it comes to women or that he swears.

Far more loathsome is the proof that he chews with his mouth wide open. Crooks and Liars has the video.

Indifferent to Blair's begging and pleading, Mr. Bush tears off a hunk of roll and pops it onto his thick, protruding tongue. The tongue snakes back inside his mouth and Bush's jaws begin to masticate exaggeratedly while he curls his lips into a simian oval and flaps his entire mouth open and shut... open and shut ... open and shut in lip-smacking syncopation, sending flecks of dinner roll and spittle shooting out in all directions.

Now, that is disgusting. Our hearts go out to Barbara Bush. No doubt, she's feeling the humiliation any mother would if she discovers, too late in life, that she has raised an uncouth lout for a son.