Part of an exchange during George W. Bush's trip to Galveston, Texas yesterday:
"MRS. NOVELLI: Plus nobody can touch it.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. You just said something else that was profound. What was it?
MRS. NOVELLI: Nobody can touch it but you.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, not me, but you.
MRS. NOVELLI: No, I know. I know. But me. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, nobody can touch it but you. (Laughter.)
MRS. NOVELLI: Right, this you."
This kind of sexy banter might have been all the rage when Ken Starr was fixating on The Big Dog's Slick Willy, but to hear it from our Chief Pious Exemplar Bush is too disturbing, especially on the heels of his opening remarks,
"Do you still have Splash Day?" (Laughter.) You have to be a baby boomer to know what I'm talking about. (Laughter.) I'm not saying whether I came or not on Splash Day, I'm just saying, do you have Splash Day. (Laughter.)"
WaPo: "President Bush drew laughs from his audience Tuesday when he asked whether the Galveston area still hosts "Splash Day."
The annual beach party that dates to the 1950s does live on - but now as an unofficial gay and lesbian event."
OutSmart: "In the 1950s, gay men and women would go to Sunday tea dances at the black clubs on the island, according to Hank Hinkle, a friend of mine who used to travel to Galveston from Houston to attend the dances. At the gatherings, there was both same-sex and interracial dancing—which was pretty unheard of back then in pre-Civil Rights south. Another friend Gigi Desoto, who grew up in Galveston and graduated from Ball High, told me that Splash Day in the ’50s and ’60s was so popular with the gay community, who would pour over from Houston for a day in the sun to be themselves, that one year state police and the Texas Rangers closed the causeway, saying the island couldn’t hold any more people."
I'm not saying whether George W. Bush attended Splash Day, but it's probably worth asking some of the older celebrants if they ever noticed a certain intoxicated, unibrowed, prep school boy with oodles of bon vivant traipsing among the queens and the debauched.
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