As heard today on Wait...Wait... Don't Tell Me: The NPR News Quiz (my Monday morning religion): Maureen Dowd, the most incipient (look it up) Pulitzer Prize-winner this (non-lying) side of Joe Ellis, compared President Bush to Gene Kelly in a recent column. The comparison was made in response to the tap dance that President Bush did for reporters a few weeks ago, while waiting to endorse John McCain in the Rose Garden of the White House. (This was unrelated the tap dances that President Bush does regularly around the truth, which are more metaphorical and much harder to deal with.)

Gene Kelly's widow responded to the Times, and I like things that deal with Gene Kelly, so I paste the letter here:

Re “Soft Shoe in Hard Times” (column, March 16):
Surely it must have been a slip for Maureen Dowd to align the artistry of my late husband, Gene Kelly, with the president’s clumsy performances. To suggest that “George Bush has turned into Gene Kelly” represents not only an implausible transformation but a considerable slight. If Gene were in a grave, he would have turned over in it.

When Gene was compared to the grace and agility of Jack Dempsey, Wayne Gretzky and Willie Mays, he was delighted. But to be linked with a clunker — particularly one he would consider inept and demoralizing — would have sent him reeling.

Graduated with a degree in economics from Pitt, Gene was not only a gifted dancer, director and choreographer, he was also a most civilized man. He spoke multiple languages; wrote poetry; studied history; understood the projections of Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes. He did the Sunday Times crossword in ink. Exceedingly articulate, Gene often conveyed more through movement than others manage with words.

Sadly, President Bush fails to communicate meaningfully with either. For George Bush to become Gene Kelly would require impossible leaps in creativity, erudition and humility.

Patricia Ward Kelly
Los Angeles, March 16, 2008