Skimmer-in-Chief

Bush's summer reading list has been announced:

 Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
 Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky
 The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry

On cable news it was duly noted that these are hefty tomes. And then a bell clanged -- off once again to Woodward's Plan of Attack.

The morning of Friday, December 28, the president rose at 5 am at his Crawford, Texas, ranch and spent some time with his wife, Laura [I'm glad Woodward specified which wife Bush was spending time with]…. Bush had just read Theodore Rexby Edmund Morris, a glowing portrait of President Teddy Roosevelt and his "big stick" diplomacy of the early 20th century. Even a casual reader of the 555-page text, even one inclined to skim, as Bush might have been, could not miss the message….

So if Dubya is inclined to be a skimmer, I suggest that he let his wife, Laura, do the actual reading.

Instead of wading through the Barry book, Dubya could watch the PBS documentary Influenza 1918, which really cranked up my germophobia.

And instead of struggling to sound out all those Russian names in the Radzinsky bio, the president simply could watch
Nicholas and Alexandra or, my personal fave, Rasputin -- because an Alan Rickman in his prime made for one really hot mad monk (tagline: He was a magician. A madman. A savior and seducer....).

Unfortunately, I haven't come up with a good Salt substitute yet.