Really Giving 'Em Something to Talk About
"Reaction to the Bush daughters' alcohol-related antics ranges from sanctimonious to sympathetic."
By REED JOHNSON, Times Staff Writer
LA Times
The media brew-ha-ha that erupted last week over the Bush twins'
alcohol-related misfortunes might make one yearn for the monastic
self-restraint and quiet decorum of the Clinton years. Unless, that is,
you're Rudy Rucker Jr.
Rucker, a 29-year-old San Franciscan, operates thefirsttwins.com, a
freewheeling Web site devoted to Jenna and Barbara, whose father, George
W. Bush, happens to be president of the United States. Police reports
that the 19-year-old First Twins had been charged with possessing alcohol
(Barbara) and using a false ID to try to obtain it (Jenna) at a
restaurant in Austin, Texas, where the legal drinking age is 21, set off
a flurry of cyber-chatter on Rucker's 6-month-old Web site.
"People have been going nuts in the last 48 hours," Rucker said last
week during peak Internet trafficking. Was all the fuss justified over a
couple of college freshmen out on the town--albeit with their own private
Secret Service entourage in tow?
"Yes, it's legitimate," Rucker said. "It's not about murder, it's not
about botched foreign politics, it's about girls growing up in college."
Bipartisan diversion, not hard-core Beltway punditry, is after, after
all, his site's raison d'e^tre. Most of us "are over 19, so we've gone
through that phase of our life" where we've experienced similar episodes
of errant behavior, he added.
Around the nation and the world, media and public response to the
incident varied dramatically, from the sympathetic to the sardonic, the
sanctimonious to the shoulder-shrugging. Leading the charge was the
pun-happy New York Post, which ran a story under the headline "Jenna and
Tonic." It also dubbed Jenna the "Terrible Twin" and "Bottle Blond." Last
month, the second-born Bush daughter pleaded no contest to an
alcohol-related citation.
Elsewhere, the reaction was less giddy. The Washington Post began its
May 31 story in sober fashion, with a straightforward recounting of just
the facts, ma'am. But by the eighth graph the writer couldn't resist
describing Chuy's restaurant, where the event occurred, as "a joint known
for mediocre food and killer margaritas."
Other correspondents ventured a guess as to What All This Means in
terms of first family emotional dynamics. "I'm reluctant to play family
therapist for a family I've never met," Joan Walsh wrote near the end of
an insightful May 31 piece in the online journal Salon.com, in which she
put the Bush clan on the couch, psycho-journalistically speaking. Her
diagnosis? President Bush erred by concealing his own 1976 drunk-driving
arrest from his daughters. "That was a mistake," Walsh wrote, "and the
twins' recent run of bad behavior seems designed to let him know that."
Across the pond, some British journalists--not a group generally known
for viewing pub-crawling as a capital offense--tended to see the incident
through a pint glass, darkly. In England, underage alcohol abuse is
gaining recognition as a widespread social problem. Its dimensions were
underscored last summer when Prime Minister Tony Blair's then-16-year-old
son Euan was found in what was described as a "drunk and incapable"
condition in London's Leicester Square. The boy, who'd been out
celebrating after taking exams, also reportedly misled police about his
identity and age.
Simon Jenkins, writing in the Times of London last week, raised the
specter of America's failed Prohibition experiment in the 1920s and '30s
in arguing that "America's under-21 rule is a piece of political
archaeology . . . a nostalgic act of moral majoritarian
wish-fulfillment."
"If the drinking law were properly enforced, the University of Texas
would have to be converted from an academic to a correctional
institution," Jenkins wrote. Later in his piece, headlined "Twin-Track
Approach to the New Prohibition," he observed that, "Any nation lurches
into hypocrisy when it legislates social disapproval of the consensual
activities of specific groups."
Katie Roiphe, Jenkins' counterpart at Britain's left-leaning daily,
the Guardian, speculated that the twins' antics actually could benefit
the Bush presidency by making it appear less stodgy, more human. She
described Jenna and Barbara as "Southern party girls exuding a kind of
plump lazy sexuality, evoking warm nights and big cars, chewing gum and
margaritas--the appealing opposite of the slick newscastery sheen of the
Gore daughters."
In the raging subconscious of cyberspace, where arguments tend to be
less carefully considered and inhibitions nonexistent, opinions
concerning the presidential progeny ran to the ribald. Along with the
inevitable jokes ("Maybe we should call them the Busch sisters") and
ventings of outrage ("This has got to be the most blatant form of dirty
politics") there were many been-there-done-that expressions of
commiseration. One cyber-scribe, apparently eavesdropping from overseas,
opined: "You Americans are so funny. No alcohol for anyone, but let them
buy guns and shoot each other."
Various pet subtexts quickly emerged. There was
the-bartender-is-a-fink subtext; apparently, it was a Chuy's employee who
reported the twins to the police. There was the
alcohol-is-thicker-than-blood subtext, in reference to President Bush's
self-admitted alcohol overindulging as a younger man.
There was the Democrat-liberal media conspiracy subtext. And there was
the what's-sauce-for-the-goose subtext: When Bush was Texas governor, he
signed a 1997 amendment that stiffened the penalty for third-strike
alcohol-related offenses, as Jenna Bush may discover if she continues to
slip up.
While the White House has been pleading with reporters not to overplay
the story, Rucker, who operates a small Internet service provider,
monkeybrains.net, said the Bush twins were fated to be scrutinized from
the get go. "The fact that there's two of them in college, there was
going to be interest no matter what," he said. "The media was going to
find ways to dredge up stories. Every move they made was going to be
watched."
How long that interest will last he couldn't tell. "But there's a good
3 1/2 years of glory yet."
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