Bear with me here, I’ve been nearly completely out of the loop for the past few days, so I’m very late to the game and only just catching up on recent news stories. The one about the Bush family being targeted by a hacker was one of them. But the part about Bush 43′s artistic endeavors made my eyes pop out of my  head:

The leaked photos included intimate moments: a snapshot of George H.W. Bush that appeared to have been taken during his recent stay at a Houston hospital, a shot of George W. Bush posing with a cardboard cutout of himself wearing a beret, and paintings by the younger Bush of himself showering and in a bathtub.

Assuming George W. Bush has a brain– which is being generous– what the heck was he thinking? Who– especially a former United States president– paints (really bad) naked pictures of themselves in the bathtub and shower? And why would Bush sign his artwork with “43″ instead of his own name– discounting the possibility that he forgot how to spell his own name, of course.

Who the hell does all that? It’s terrifying to remind myself that this child-man was actually responsible for the safety and security of our country, for life and death decisions (some of those decisions being the worst in recent memory), for being a calming voice of reason and wisdom (let me know when you’ve stopped laughing… and crying). And this same child-man painted these:

I made my living as an artist for years, I studied pictorial arts at UCLA under some of the finest artists in the United States, and I graduated cum laude, so I feel qualified to appraise what my poor eyes have been subjected to, and I agree with this assessment from Gawker’s arts blogger Greg Allen:

It doesn’t look like he’s studied anatomy, perspective, shading, drawing from live models, color theory, brushes, nothing. He just jumped in there and started painting, how hard could it be?… Except for the whole looking-at-yourself, shower/bathtub solitude thing, I don’t see GWB probing any real psychic depths here.

If you follow the link, you’ll see that Allen actually dignifies these “works” with serious analysis. I’m unable to do that, because if there is one word I do not and cannot associate with GW Bush, it’s dignity.