SFist Rants: Our Poor, Poor Favorite Book

We here at SFist feel compelled to write about the latest outrage coming out of Crawford Texas these days. No, not the whole War on Terror thing, but the word on the street being that one of W's Summer Beach Reading Books is Albert Camus' The Stranger. Apparently, he was so taken by it that he debated it with Tony Snow. We can only imagine the conversation, too: "See, The Stranger is a book about philosophy, which means the author, Cay-Moo, philosiphizes. He's a philosopher. I find what he says interesting."

Of course, with anything coming out of the White House, we first have to plead skepticism. It would be like this Administration to leak out the names of hefty tomes as a way to counter-balance the prevailing perception of the President's, umm, lack of intellectual heft. We just don't see the dude kicking back in Crawford, grabbing some non-alcoholic beer, putting on the ball game, and busting out some French philosophizing. We always saw him as a James Clavell/Wilbur Smith kind of guy anyways, you know, the kind of guy who is into books about some manly freedom-loving Western man conquering non-freedom loving yet politically correct Easterners and bedding all their women through sheer force of brawn, smarts and resolve.

This is making everyone wonder the meaning of it all? Jean Girard, oui? George W? Non. After all, Camus' take on the absurdity of the universe and the meaning in its meaningless is pretty much the complete opposite of the world view espoused by President "You're Either With Us or Against Us." Not to mention the whole doing it for Jesus pose. Then again, maybe he is seeing something in the tale of a callow, incurious man who realizes the true nature of the universe after doing something that damns him. That act? Well, as any fan of the Cure would know, Killing an Arab.