What the FUCK is wrong with Barbara Bush?

Pardon my French there, but that's the only appropriate response I can give after having one of the most outrageous things I've ever heard confirmed for its sheer jaw-dropping stupidity and callousness.

On the way home today, I was listening to a radio interview with Dr. Justin Frank, a Washington D.C.-based psychoanalyst, psychiatry professor, and the author of Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President.

While discussing major life-changing influences on George W. Bush, Dr. Frank mentioned George's sister, Robin Bush, who died from childhood leukemia at the age of three. While I was digesting this new nugget of information (George had a sister?), Dr. Frank unloaded this bombshell:

Robin died in New York in October 1953; her parents spent the next day golfing in Rye, attending a small memorial service the following day before flying back to Texas. George learned of his sister's illness only after her death, when his parents returned to Texas, where the family remained while the child's body was buried in a Connecticut family plot.

-- Bush on the Couch, Dr. Justin Frank, page 3

No, that's insufficient; let me try this again:

What... the... FUCK?!?

(There goes that French again)

I cannot even begin to wrap my mind for an explanation that's even remotely sane or -- dare I say it -- human. By any measure of empathy, what kind of sick, twisted, pathetic excuse for a parent do you have to be to go out for a vigorous day of golf not even 24 hours after your child dies? The poor kid wasn't even cold or buried yet, for crying out loud, but George Sr. and Babs didn't have any qualms about hitting the green instead of doing something else, such as grieving their loss -- or even comforting their surviving kids?

And if you read that above excerpt again, it gets even sicker; not only did young George not get told of his baby sister's death until after his parents got home (from a day at the links, remember), but then his parents stayed in Texas while their baby daughter was buried in Connecticut.

George and Barbara Bush skipped their baby daughter's burial.

I wish I could say that this was just some horrifically twisted piece of fiction, but it appears to be genuine; while it's not covered in any of the sanitized official Bush family biographies, the same incident has been reported in various unauthorized reports of the Bushes -- check here or here for two more sources.

Now, I'll admit that everyone deals with grief in their own way; some people accept things in stoic silence, others beat their breasts and wail to the heavens. But going out for a day of golf -- and not telling your other kids that they've lost a sister -- that's a new one. It's either an extremely callous attitude, or an extremely cavalier one, and neither option is flattering in the least.

I mean, it's been over an hour since I started writing this, and I still can't wrap my mind around what kind of personality it would take to make such behavior acceptable -- though to be frank, I hope I never do.

As for the question of why I'm singling Barbara Bush for fucktastic behavior when it appears both she and George Sr. were co-Winners in the Most Inappropriate Behavior For The Death of a Child™ award... well, to the best of my knowledge, at least George H. W. Bush has never uttered anything as totally callous as:

Well, now, that's behind us. It's time to move on.

-- Barbara Bush, to her husband after losing the 1992 Presidential election

[S]so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this -- this *chuckle* is working very well for them.

-- Barbara Bush, on Hurricane Katrina refugees stuck in the Houston Astrodome

[W]hy should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

-- Barbara Bush, on people's concerns about casualties in the Iraq war

People say that a child's behavior is a reflection of his parents. Knowing just how mind-bogglingly twisted Barbara Bush is certainly sheds some light on why George W. is as screwed up as he is...