{"id":758,"date":"2004-03-11T23:50:59","date_gmt":"2004-03-12T04:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/03\/his_feet_dont_touch_the_earth\/"},"modified":"2004-03-11T23:50:59","modified_gmt":"2004-03-12T04:50:59","slug":"his_feet_dont_touch_the_earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/03\/his_feet_dont_touch_the_earth\/","title":{"rendered":"His Feet Don’t Touch the Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Knox Bubba<\/a> has this disclaimer:<\/p>\n

Anything on this site could be real, or it could be parody or satire, or it could be just made up. Sometimes SKB can’t even tell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s getting to the point where I similarly can’t tell when I read stories about this White House. Jimmy Breslin has a column on Bush’s visit to a 9\/11 memorial<\/a> in Nassau County. I’d like to think he made this up, but it sounds as if it actually happened:<\/p>\n

For days now, the job at Eisenhower Park in Nassau County has been to follow the order from the White House through the Secret Service and down to the park workers:
\n“The president’s feet are not to touch the dirt.”
\nSo all yesterday, large crews drawn from all county parks worked to ensure that, as always in his life, George Bush’s feet do not touch the ground when he appears in the big park today.
\nBush arrives for a fund-raiser at a restaurant in the park. That is indoors and he doesn’t have to worry about his feet there. But he has to go over ground to an administration building where he is to meet with families of 9\/11 victims. After that, he has to go over more ground to get to the site of a memorial to the victims.
\n. . .
\nBush was to move to a couple of locations on dirty parkland. Last Thursday, the bureaucrats in charge of the park heard from the Secret Service. The word immediately ran through the halls of local government.
\nNot a foot touches the earth.
\nAnd the workers went to work. First, there was the ground from a parking lot to a wood building used for special activities. This probably will be where Bush meets with the families.
\n“We’re not even sure he will use this,” a foreman said. “They just tell us he is going to meet with families. We ask, ‘Where?’ They won’t tell us. So we went ahead, anyway.”
\nThey put up a concrete sidewalk from the parking lot to a ramp leading into a side entrance to the building.
\nThe rain and sleet made it impossible for the concrete to dry. So they changed from concrete to the asphalt used on streets. They hoped the president wouldn’t mind this. After all, it would protect his feet from touching the earth. Gravel and hot steaming asphalt.
\nWhen they finally had it done, a full-fledged asphalt path, a Secret Service agent put his foot through the steam and left a large footprint in the walk that was to keep the president’s feet off the ground.
\nThe Secret Service man walked on blithely. He gave no indication that he knew where he was. The workmen muttered and had to go back and fix the walk.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Priorities, priorities. We don’t want to get the president’s feet dirty on a little service for some dead people; he’s got important fund raisers to attend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Knox Bubba has this disclaimer: Anything on this site could be real, or it could be parody or satire, or it could be just made up. Sometimes SKB can’t even tell. It’s getting to the point where I similarly can’t tell when I read stories about this White House. Jimmy Breslin has a column […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}