It smells of a really misguided piece of advice from one of
Poppy's advisors, a way of making our
president more populist, more accessible. This is for him to give nicknames to everyone around him, which even the nickname recipients often do not understand. These are from the New York Times Week in Review (Feb 18, 2001), but I'm sure some more will surface in the coming (help!)
four years of
Dubya presidency...
Attorney General
John Ashcroft- Snake Hips
Secretary of Defense
Donald H. Rumsfeld- Chickenman
Environmental Protection Agency administrator
Christine Todd Whitman- Pistol Pete
Secretary of State
Colin Powell- Bubblefoot
First Lady
Laura Bush- Stretch
Russian President
Vladimir Putin- Ostrich Legs
Secretary of Agriculture
Ann M. Veneman- Bullet
Vice President
Dick Cheney- Hopalong, or alternatively, Crash-Dive
There is also an aid Frenchy, there are Knuckles, Bones, The Eskimo, Skeezix, The Undertaker, Stilts, and a
cabinet member Spinach Man. And Bush has a friend named Darryl whom he calls The Big Goober. This is why we call him The Embarrassment.