George Bush and OJ Simpson

our daily blog today
is from whabby
he seems to always make
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George Bush and OJ Simpson

by Whabby

How do you think George Bush should be treated when he leaves office, owls?

How do you think OJ Simpson should be treated right now (assuming he’s guilty, which I do)?

These questions popped into mind the other day while I was out running. The more I turned them over, the more absorbing and connected they became. At first, I was concentrating on them from a somewhat narrow social perspective, like Jane Austen might have. But it kind of expanded from there.

What if, sometime in your future, just by chance, you happen to be in the same room as OJ Simpson, and an opportunity is obviously coming up to meet him? OJ’s in reasonable health, as far as I know, and will probably live for quite a while, so this is not a completely far-fetched idea; it actually could happen. What would you do? Would you actually meet him? Or would you deliberately avoid the opportunity as a way of expressing (in a nice, non-confrontational, passive way) your disapproval of him and his character?

And what if, instead, the person confronting you with this dilemma is not OJ, but George Bush, who also should be around for quite a while after he leaves office, and so could also be in a position to meet one of us.

I think, quite seriously, that I’d deliberately turn down the opportunity to meet either one of these gentlemen!

That got me thinking about social isolation and its implications. What consequences would there be for day-to-day living if people didn’t want to meet you, didn’t want to invite you to anything involving them, didn’t want to enter into ANY kind of professional or business interaction with you, and so on?

Some of this is part of the fabric of OJ Simpson’s life already. Obviously, no organization or group in its right mind will ever seek any kind of promotional association with him. I’m sure OJ has no speaker fee (at least, I hope fervently that he doesn’t)! Who would want to go and line his pockets and listen to him? And I, for one, sure had zero interest in reading that book he wrote even before it was yanked from the shelves. There are lots of important doors that are forever closed to OJ.

I suspect a lot of you are more or less in agreement with me, on how you’d treat OJ personally, and how you want to see him treated by society. We've made a collective judgment that has had (and will never stop having) a serious negative impact on his life.

Now, what about Bush? In addition to not ever wanting anything to do with him personally, I don’t think I’ll be supporting any fund-raising opportunities involving him (wouldn’t contribute), or any speaking engagements (wouldn’t go), or purchase a book he might write (wouldn’t read it), or, well, you get the idea!

Harsh as it might seem, I suppose that when it comes right down to it, I think OJ Simpson and George Bush deserve to be treated rather similarly after Bush leaves office. As equals, as it were.

Owls, am I being way too harsh on Bush? Should he be afforded the same social courtesies and business opportunities as any other ex-president?

What do you think?