"In the midst of his 1999 campaign run, the man who was once a Yale cheerleader scuffed up and spit-polished his Texas twang. Shortly before he was elected, he bought a sixteen-hundred-acre pig farm in Crawford, Texas, and transformed it into an old family homestead, complete with a man-made lake stocked with largemouth bass cross-bred so that they’re easy to catch. When Bush became president, a private think tank, the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, was established to tell him what to think. Five speechwriters were hired to tell him what to say. Sometimes accused of being fed lines through an earpiece when speaking in public, he is most engaging during carefully choreographed pieces of reality TV: landing jets on aircraft carriers, liberating designer turkeys from Iraq, fielding canned questions at invitation-only town hall meetings that have been carefully cast, scripted, and rehearsed. To play the president of the United States, George W. Bush is paid $400,000 each year. To play George W. Bush, Steve Bridges earns substantially more..."

Read the rest of my latest feature, a profile of George W. Bush impersonator Steve Bridges, at The Rake.

EW says American Idol's more popular than ever because there no clear frontrunner this year. I have a different theory. Also: Thomas Kinkade's dripwork and burger ad wars.