Where’s “Biff”? As usual, crisis finds Bush AWOL

The flames in the Middle East are rising. Bush’s tragi-asco in Iraq is lurching toward a failed state, Israel has launched a war against Lebanon in a bizarre counterproductive effort to wipe out a guerrila movement. What is the President of the United States and Former Leader of the Free World doing about these crises?

Unfortunately, George W. Bush is more of a “Biff” than he is Leader of the Free World. As usual, he exerts no positive leadership in a crisis. Remember the running gag on Seinfeld? The character “Biff” in Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” may be familiar:

Willy’s emphasis on being well-liked stems from a belief that it will bring him to perfect success—not a harmful dream in itself, except that he clings to this idea as if it is a life-preserver, refusing to give it up. His boys are not only well-liked but quite handsome, and as far as Willy is concerned, that’s all anyone needs. He pitches this idea to his sons so effectively that they believe opportunity will fall into their laps. (In this way, Biff and Happy can be considered forerunners to the culture of entitlement.) Of course, real life is not so generous, and neither are able to hold much in the way of respectable employment.

But “biff” has a number of other meanings, as listed in the Urban Dictionary:

1. biff: v. To mess something up, specifically a physical activity.

“I was coming down the mountain on my snowboard when I biffed.”

2. biff: To Fall HARD

“When running on Woodward, Verbeek biffed pretty bad.”

3. biff: (n) a vagina

“her biff is mad sexay”

4. biff: Word of Irish Gaelic origin; an insult. Use this handy acronym to remember the meaning:

B ig
I ignorant
F at
F ucker

Man, Miguel Caron is such a biff. I hate him.

5. Biff: n. A fat asshole who is an angry drunk that abuses woman.

“Take away Luke’s beer, he’s being a biff, a drunk angry asshole.”

6. biff: to screw something up in any way, minimal or major can constitute the use if the word “Biff”.

“Don’t biff this one up like last time.”

7. Biff Fall/Eat shit hard

“Look at that poser, he just biffed it.”

8. Biff A really fuckin’ stupid person.

” That kid we met earlier, was he mentally retarted or was he just Biff?”

Uncurious Biff doesn’t lead israel, he follows them. Biff doesn’t talk to anyone he has decided to call “evil.” So that pretty much puts Biff on the sidelines, sitting on third base thinking he hit a triple. Maybe he’ll go to Omaha and sit in a bunker…or fly to Arizona for a birthday party… who knows? Biff and his handlers think only about energizing their base, looting the treasury, spying on opponents, maximizing corporate profits, kickbacks and “campaign contributions,” and creating a single party state. Real world problems, crises, the usual grist for the mill a real leader, are not, in Republican terms, things for government to deal with. Rather, “the market” and “individual responsibility” are “tasked” with solving problems.

So don’t look for “Biff” to have anything to do with a solution to the Middle East crises. Aside from contributing to the sense that “The End Days are at hand….”