In the new issue of Rolling Stone, National Magazine Award winner and onetime Observer ‘Power Punk‘ Matt Taibbi offers a little bit of George W. Bush fan fiction in the form of a fake interview headlined Bush Apologizes: The Farewell Interview We Wish He’d Give.
Subheadlined "W. comes clean—on his dad, Condi’s farts and the time Dick waterboarded the house boy," the piece is the sort of prankish, juvenile, utterly bogus Q&A that works better in a magazine like Vice (see this month’s hilarious—and patently fake—interview with two guys called The Porn Rangers) than an earnest publication like Rolling Stone, which takes its own interviews so seriously—be they with Brad Pitt, David Letterman or John McCain—they lard them with institutional weight by calling them "The Rolling Stone Interview."
Here’s Mr. Taibbi pretending to grill the man his magazine once enlisted historian Sean Wilentz to condemn as The Worst President in History, about an important matter that touches on all aspects of his eight years in the White House, from ignoring the August 6, 2001 briefing that read Bin Ladin Determined To Strike Inside US to the invasion of Iraq, the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, "Mission Accomplished," torture, warrant-less wiretaps, the economy, and his massaging of German Chancellor Angela Merkel:
Well, like I said, people get nervous down there. It’s — [laughs] — I can’t believe someone told you about that.
But you’re leaving office in a couple of weeks. Come on. Throw us a bone. Just think, you finally get to talk about all of these things.
Look, I can’t. Besides, it wasn’t that big of a — OK, fine. It was Condi.
Condoleezza Rice farted in the Oval Office! When she was the national security adviser?
No, this was when she was State…
Deadline for the 2009 National Magazine Awards was Jan. 5.