Barbara Bush: Let Them Eat Cake

Many of us were taught urban legends and tall tales in our high school history classes in the form of great phrases not properly credited. Of course, the classes were not all enhanced fabrications. However, one of the greatest lines attributed to a formidable woman just didn't happen.

Simply put, Marie Antoinette, Queen of France and wife of King Louis XVI, was not as clever as we would like to believe. On the eve of the French Revolution, when told that the peasants were complaining that there was not enough bread to go around, she did not offer the stinging retort: "Let them eat cake."

This claim was made three years ago by the Queen's biographer Lady Antonia Fraser. She claimed the line was instead spoken one hundred years earlier by Marie-Therese, wife of Louis XIV. Insensitive and ignorant, it is most definitely a great line and something to cement a person's reputation. The line had always been a misunderstanding, a poor adaptation of the French word "brioche," which actually translates as a "funny-shaped, yellow, eggy bun." What makes for poor record-keeping instead became a classic historical legend, the last thing the Queen says before she gets decapitated.

Barbara Bush may not have uttered a comparably insensitive line during her Labor Day visit to Hurricane evacuees at the Houston Astrodome, but it seems to be close enough. We remember this elderly Bush as the no-nonsense wife of George HW Bush, better known in his circles as "41," top slice of bread in the Bush/Clinton/Bush sandwich.

In an interview with a radio news program, Mrs. Bush put a sunny spin on a terrible situation: "So many of the people here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them"

Mrs. Bush adds some chuckles to punctuate this amused commentary. In her world, we have to wonder how it can be "working very well for them." In her world, a hardship probably means having to navigate through some contractors as they add another wing to your Kennebunkport estate. In her world, a laugh and a twinkle in your eye probably means every little thing will turn out okay. The sun will come out tomorrow. If her son had learned to do this rather than smirk, the stinging effects of such words really wouldn't be that much different.

It is unconscionable and unforgivable that anybody would conclude that the survivors of this catastrophe are really better off right now, but let's give Mrs. Bush credit for one thing. With this one unfortunate slip of the tongue, a few moments of a radio interview, she has gone far towards helping us more clearly paint the economic boundaries of America in 2005. The lives of these people, in effect, really had no value without money. Losing your house, friends, community, and sense of place is a good thing. Be our guests, and we might even feed you some cake if you're good boys and girls.

Christopher J. Stephens is an adjunct college english instructor for Northeastern University, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Western New England College, and Corinthian Colleges, Inc.