Revenge of the Pool Boy

On first read, I thought this article about the Bush family pool boy must have been a joke. I mean, what kind of self-respecting pool boy speaks English?

Then I remembered that this was taking place in Maine, not Palm Beach.

Cheap jokes aside, I find certain parts of the article hard to believe. Like how a 23-year old pool boy engages in offhand discussions of Bush 41's policies. Or how his friend happened to set up a web site to help raise money for his dental work. Or how he just happened to go to a war protest down the road from the Bush compound and wound up talking to their cousins at a lemonade stand, and that those same cousins indicated disagreement with the administration's policy. These coincidences strain credulity, but they make for an excellent feature.

But I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment:

For Razsa, his job -- the only one he could find -- put him directly in touch with the very sort of power he holds partly responsible for his, and other people's, hard times.

"I look at the biggest middle finger in the world all day," is his more succinct explanation.

I ask Razsa if he has a monologue loaded up, in the event that his next encounter was at closer range. To my surprise, the idea doesn't appeal.

"What do you say? 'Thanks for School of the Americas, and Iran-Contra, and NAFTA, and shipping all those jobs overseas, and arming Saddam, and funding the Taliban?' What do you say -- 'You're a jerk?' There's nothing that can be put into a sentence that would capture the lives these people have taken, and the way of life that's been taken."

I mean, how do you burn down the master's house when that master is the President of the United States -- or, for that matter, his father?

Duh. You tell your story. And hope that people listen.