Funny you should mention WGBH. They were the first place I heard that line about Bush being the opposite of Trump. Whenever an audience member called to remind them about something awful he'd done, the hosts of the show would come back to their core idea about "opposites."
The commentators were pointing out that G.H.W.Bush is being remembered against the current totally dysfunctional Trump/GOP disaster, and the fact that people are even praising an American president for how Polite he was is really a sad statement.
I think he's being praised for being a gentleman, even though it's often not phrased quite that way. The old meaning of "gentleman." Rich. Upper-class, in the sense of family prestige and connections. I recently reread the Doonesbury collection "Read My Lips, Make My Day, Eat Quiche, and Die!" It includes a lot of jokes about Bush (Ivy League Poppy and his evil twin Skippy, for that weird combination of ineffectual and vicious). Trump is just presented as crass--wealth without taste or sense.
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The commentators were pointing out that G.H.W.Bush is being remembered against the current totally dysfunctional Trump/GOP disaster, and the fact that people are even praising an American president for how Polite he was is really a sad statement.
I think he's being praised for being a gentleman, even though it's often not phrased quite that way. The old meaning of "gentleman." Rich. Upper-class, in the sense of family prestige and connections. I recently reread the Doonesbury collection "Read My Lips, Make My Day, Eat Quiche, and Die!" It includes a lot of jokes about Bush (Ivy League Poppy and his evil twin Skippy, for that weird combination of ineffectual and vicious). Trump is just presented as crass--wealth without taste or sense.