Entries this day: Bush Cancel_BB Day

Bush

11:06am JST Thursday 30 September 2004

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/16/tsurumi/index_np.html


The dunce
His former Harvard Business School professor recalls George W. Bush
not just as a terrible student but as spoiled, loutish and a
pathological liar.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Mary Jacoby



Sept. 16, 2004 | For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush's
professors at Harvard Business School, was content with his green-card
status as a permanent legal resident of the United States. But Bush's
ascension to the presidency in 2001 prompted the Japanese native to
secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be able to speak out
with the full authority of citizenship about why he believes Bush
lacks the character and intellect to lead the world's oldest and most
powerful democracy.

"I don't remember all the students in detail unless I'm prompted by
something," Tsurumi said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But I
always remember two types of students. One is the very excellent
student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working with.
Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect -- the
very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like
George Bush, those who are totally the opposite."

The future president was one of 85 first-year MBA students in
Tsurumi's macroeconomic policies and international business class in
the fall of 1973 and spring of 1974. Tsurumi was a visiting associate
professor at Harvard Business School from January 1972 to August 1976;
today, he is a professor of international business at Baruch College
in New York.

Trading as usual on his father's connections, Bush entered Harvard in
1973 for a two-year program. He'd just come off what George H.W. Bush
had once called his eldest son's "nomadic years" -- partying, drifting
from job to job, working on political campaigns in Florida and Alabama
and, most famously, apparently not showing up for duty in the Alabama
National Guard.

Harvard Business School's rigorous teaching methods, in which the
professor interacts aggressively with students, and students are
encouraged to challenge each other sharply, offered important insights
into Bush, Tsurumi said. In observing students' in-class performances,
"you develop pretty good ideas about what are their weaknesses and
strengths in terms of thinking, analysis, their prejudices, their
backgrounds and other things that students reveal," he said.

One of Tsurumi's standout students was Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., now
the seventh-ranking member of the House Republican leadership. "I
typed him as a conservative Republican with a conscience," Tsurumi
said. "He never confused his own ideology with economics, and he
didn't try to hide his ignorance of a subject in mumbo jumbo. He was
what I call a principled conservative." (Though clearly a partisan
one. On Wednesday, Cox called for a congressional investigation of the
validity of documents that CBS News obtained for a story questioning
Bush's attendance at Guard duty in Alabama.)

Bush, by contrast, "was totally the opposite of Chris Cox," Tsurumi
said. "He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when
challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying
something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that.
Students jumped on him; I challenged him." When asked to explain a
particular comment, said Tsurumi, Bush would respond, "Oh, I never
said that." A White House spokeswoman did not return a phone call
seeking comment.

In 1973, as the oil and energy crisis raged, Tsurumi led a discussion
on whether government should assist retirees and other people on fixed
incomes with heating costs. Bush, he recalled, "made this ridiculous
statement and when I asked him to explain, he said, 'The government
doesn't have to help poor people -- because they are lazy.' I said,
'Well, could you explain that assumption?' Not only could he not
explain it, he started backtracking on it, saying, 'No, I didn't say
that.'"

If Cox had been in the same class, Tsurumi said, "I could have asked
him to challenge that and he would have demolished it. Not personally
or emotionally, but intellectually."
Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film "The Grapes of
Wrath," based on John Steinbeck's novel of the Depression. "We were in
a discussion of the New Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt's
policies 'socialism.' He denounced labor unions, the Securities and
Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He
denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism
and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his
prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically,
polemically or academically."

Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then
become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In
class, he couldn't challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came
up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who
had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too
much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile
and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy."

Many of Tsurumi's students came from well-connected or wealthy
families, but good manners prevented them from boasting about it, the
professor said. But Bush seemed unabashed about the connections that
had brought him to Harvard. "The other children of the rich and famous
were at least well bred to the point of realizing universal values and
standards of behavior," Tsurumi said. But Bush sometimes came late to
class and often sat in the back row of the theater-like classroom,
wearing a bomber jacket from the Texas Air National Guard and spitting
chewing tobacco into a cup.

"At first, I wondered, 'Who is this George Bush?' It's a very common
name and I didn't know his background. And he was such a bad student
that I asked him once how he got in. He said, 'My dad has good
friends.'" Bush scored in the lowest 10 percent of the class.

The Vietnam War was still roiling campuses and Harvard was no
exception. Bush expressed strong support for the war but admitted to
Tsurumi that he'd gotten a coveted spot in the Texas Air National
Guard through his father's connections.

"I used to chat up a number of students when we were walking back to
class," Tsurumi said. "Here was Bush, wearing a Texas Guard bomber
jacket, and the draft was the No. 1 topic in those days. And I said,
'George, what did you do with the draft?' He said, 'Well, I got into
the Texas Air National Guard.' And I said, 'Lucky you. I understand
there is a long waiting list for it. How'd you get in?' When he told
me, he didn't seem ashamed or embarrassed. He thought he was entitled
to all kinds of privileges and special deals. He was not the only one
trying to twist all their connections to avoid Vietnam. But then, he
was fanatically for the war."

Tsurumi told Bush that someone who avoided a draft while supporting a
war in which others were dying was a hypocrite. "He realized he was
caught, showed his famous smirk and huffed off."

Tsurumi's conclusion: Bush is not as dumb as his detractors allege.
"He was just badly brought up, with no discipline, and no compassion,"
he said.

In recent days, Tsurumi has told his story to various print and
television outlets and appears in Kitty Kelley's expose' "The Family:
The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty." He said other professors and
students at the business school from that time share his recollections
but are afraid to come forward, fearing ostracism or retribution. And
why is Tsurumi speaking up now? Because with the ongoing bloodshed in
Iraq and Osama bin Laden still on the loose -- not to mention a
federal deficit ballooning out of control -- the stakes are too high
to remain silent. "Obviously, I don't think he is the best person" to
be running the country, he said. "I wanted to explain why."

Cancel BB

1:29pm JST Thursday 30 September 2004

When I left Bell Wistaria, I left the internet access up for Dan to use. When he left I wanted to cancel it but the remaining roommates said they would pay for it. The price jumped after that; Yahoo's free period expired or something and now they owe me 18,000 yen. They asked me to cancel the service, which I've done halfway today (I canceled the NTT phone line; I don't have the number for YahooBB). They'll pay 10,000 yen today and 8,000 yen after payday. I'm thankful to recover the money. (plus about 900 yen pain in the ass fee)

Day

6:13pm JST Thursday 30 September 2004

Mostly messed around on internet today. Downloaded a few hundred megs of porn and took an hour nap. Verified that Misaki plans to actually come to our lesson today; she cancelled the last 3 of 4 lessons, but said, "yes sure" when I texted her phone, "will you come to our lesson today?"

After her response I wondered, do you want to come to our lesson today? cause I don't really. The 2 hours may go like molasses; I'll see what I can do about enjoying it more than doing situps.

Wow... two hours of situps would kill me.

Looking at seti@home, I see that my Thunder Gaba account is averaging 40+ workunits per day. Awesome.

Oh, also today I played Doom Funnel to which I was led when I went to play Spaced Penguin.

My train is here in Jiyugaoka.

6:53pm

Now I am here in Shinjuku for the lesson.

9:30pm

It wasn't terrible. There was lots of silence while she dug through her book humming and hawing for something to say. I was patient and closed my eyes for part of it.

The best part though; she signed as completed the four hours worth of lessons that she cancelled over the last month. I'll get paid for them though they didn't happen (though in one case I had already arrived in Shinjuku when she cancelled.) Anyway, I didn't confirm my plan with her, but I may give her 1/2 of my pay for those four lessons. If I can do it via paypal I will.