Entertainment : The 'First iPod' - Bush's Playlists

You are NOT on the DirtyGreek.Org homepage. Please CLICK HERE to go there. This NYT article reveals what President Bush has on his iPod. Kind of a weird idea for an article, but I guess with iPods being all the rage, it's no surprise that the big man's personal marketing group would want a story about his iPod to make him look cool to younger readers. I mean, it seems pretty certain that the NYT didn't go hunting for this information, and I seriously doubt that they went around asking whether the Prez had an iPod, so this is probably one of those many situations in which a news story was basically requested by his aides or... whoever does that kind of thing for him. Also, you gotta wonder how much cash either the Times or the aide who helped with the story got from Apple for this great advertising. Speaking of doing things for him, here's an interesting snippet: Mr. Bush has had his Apple iPod since July, when he received it from his twin daughters as a birthday gift. He has some 250 songs on it, a paltry number compared to the 10,000 selections it can hold. Mr. Bush, as leader of the free world, does not take the time to download the music himself; that task falls to his personal aide, Blake Gottesman, who buys individual songs and albums, including Mr. Jones's and Mr. Jackson's greatest hits, from the iTunes music store.

"First, Mr. Bush's iPod is heavy on traditional country singers like George Jones, Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney. He has selections by Van Morrison, whose "Brown Eyed Girl" is a Bush favorite, and by John Fogerty, most predictably "Centerfield," which was played at Texas Rangers games when Mr. Bush was an owner and is still played at ballparks all over America. ("Oh, put me in coach, I'm ready to play today.") The president also has an eclectic mix of songs downloaded into his iPod from Mark McKinnon, a biking buddy and his chief media strategist during the 2004 campaign. Among them are "Circle Back" by John Hiatt, "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care" by Joni Mitchell and "My Sharona," the 1979 song by the Knack that Joe Levy, a deputy managing editor at Rolling Stone in charge of music coverage, cheerfully branded "suggestive if not outright filthy" in an interview last week.

"As for an analysis of Mr. Bush's playlist, Mr. Levy of Rolling Stone started out with this: "One thing that's interesting is that the president likes artists who don't like him." Mr. Levy was referring to Mr. Fogerty, who was part of the anti-Bush "Vote for Change" concert tour across the United States last fall. Mr. McKinnon, who once wrote songs for Kris Kristofferson's music publishing company, responded in an e-mail message that "if any president limited his music selection to pro-establishment musicians, it would be a pretty slim collection."