Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Bushspeak Volume 2: Fore More Years
CD Review by Sombrero Grande
Let me begin by stating that this is simply a review of a CD entitled "Bushspeak Volume 2: Fore More Years." If you want a review of George W. Bush as a U.S. President or even as a human being I'm sure there will be a bevy of opinions posted over in the Blogcritics' penny gallery (that is, if the still-ongoing discussions in the comment section of my The Essential Kenny G CD review are any indication). This review is not of a man nor an administration, just an assessment of a CD release and my recommendation for whom, if anyone, it would be worthy of a purchase.
With that stated (and likely all readers having already moved on), let me get to the CD itself. Bushspeak Vol. 2 is a collection of audio clips pointing out misspoken names, dates and just general grammar stumblings from George W. Bush during his second term in office. Pulled from numerous speeches, the content of the CD is broken up into six "chapters:" "Bushspeak on Bush," "Bushspeak on the People," "Bushspeak on History," "Bushspeak on the Rules," "Bushspeak on the Native Tongue" and "Bushspeak on Wisdom."
Now, there are a two important things that are immediately evident upon popping it into a CD player. One, is that its entire running time is just a little over twenty minutes. Second, is that all the audio clips of Bush are played twice--yes, twice--on the CD. After each sound clip is played in its respective "chapter," they're all rounded up in the CD's final track for the "Plainspoken Reprise of Chapters 1-6," meaning that there's only about ten total minutes of actual content on the entire CD.
Those ten minutes of clips are a very mixed bag to boot. They range from the honestly chuckle-worthy, such as, "Interestingly enough, right after September 11, one of the first places I went to was a mosque...I went back to the same center 50 years later," and "...one has a stronger hand when there's more people playing your same cards," to examples of Bush simply mispronouncing a word like "eclectic" or referring to Rosa Parks as "Rosa Park." Sadly there are far more examples of the latter than the former on Bushspeak Vol. 2, giving Bush-supporters reason to feel the album is a desperate attempt to grasp onto every slip of the tongue the President has made over the last four years, while Bush-haters are likely to end up underwhelmed by the lack of content.
I have to say that I picked up Bushspeak Vol. 2 expecting to get some good laughs out of it and was sadly disappointed not only by the brevity of the content but by the rather dismal assortment of clips as well. Bushspeak Vol. 2 is recommended for only the most hard-core of Bush-haters, the folks who'll spend their hard-earned money on anything and everything anti-Bush just to prove to themselves how much they truly loathe him. For the rest of us, we can just ride out the rest of Bush's term with an extra $6.98 in our pockets.
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