[lit-ideas] The Propaganda President?
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 15:12:25 -0500
[extract of http://slate.msn.com/id/2113052/]
The Propaganda President
George W. Bush does his best Kim Jong-il.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Thursday, Feb. 3, 2005, at 5:58 PM PT
If "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il of North Korea and George W. Bush ever
meet, I suspect the two will bond like long-lost brothers. Both men are
first-born sons of powerful fathers who partied like adolescents well
into their adult lives, after which they submitted to their dynastic
fates as heads of state.
Both avoid critical thought, preferring to surround themselves with yes
men and apply propagandistic slogans to the onrushing complexities of
justice, culture, economics, and foreign policy. Bush churns out buzz
phrases with the best of them: He believes in "compassionate
conservatism" and fancies himself part of the "army of compassion." He's
the "reformer with results" who embraces the "culture of life." He
shouts his paeans to "liberty" and "freedom" (a combined 27 times during
last night's State of the Union speech, according to today's Washington
Post) while reducing civil liberties at home.
But slogan-chanting is only one small part of an effective propaganda
operation. Successful propagandists must also discourage dissenters who
might disrupt the party line. And the two best ways to keep people
stupid and nodding is by shutting down the information flow and by
stiffing the press. At these chores, Bush excels.
The administration's idea of a conversation is a long, platitudinous
presidential monologue. Every administration has warred with reporters,
but Bush's is the first to challenge the very legitimacy of the press.
Inside the White House briefing room, press secretary Scott McClellan
controls the topics discussed by playing rope-a-dope with reporters,
absorbing and ignoring the tough questions until they give up. When Vice
President Dick Cheney didn't like the campaign coverage he read in the
New York Times, the Times reporter was tossed off the plane. In the
February/March American Journalism Review, Los Angeles Times reporter
Edwin Chen complains that his newspaper has yet to score an interview
with President Bush. "This White House doesn't need California, has no
use for California politically," says Chen, "so we carry no clout."
Bush regards the press as a filter—an unnecessary one. "I'm mindful of
the filter through which some news travels, and somehow you just got to
go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people," he
said in October 2003 during a media push in which he gave interviews to
five regional broadcasters about his Iraq policy because he disliked the
national news coverage.
In fact, as Michael Kinsley wrote in Slate a year and a half ago, it's
not that Bush favors unfiltered news; he wants everybody to receive it
through his filter. In recent weeks we've learned what extremes he'll go
to in working around reporters. The Armstrong Williams case, which may
be a harbinger of a greater secret propaganda campaign by the
administration, further illustrates Bush's distrust not only of the
press, but of the public. The administration's Department of Education
paid the conservative commentator $240,000 through the cut-out of a
public relations firm to promote its No Child Left Behind law on his
broadcasts, as USA Today reported on Jan. 17. The administration has
also gotten busted for camouflaging video press releases as legitimate
news segments to promote its Medicare drug plan and warn about the
dangers of illicit drugs.
Persuasion, Aristotle taught, depends on the speaker's skill at
portraying himself as a trustworthy source. With his "aw, shucks"
demeanor and his maudlin speechifying, the former Andover cheerleader
knows how to stage a "drama" and tap the audience's emotions. He and his
co-propagandists arranged one such emotionally manipulative "gallery
play" during the State of the Union. Rather than explain his Iraq
policy, he had the mother and father of a slain U.S. Marine seated
behind an Iraqi voter in Laura Bush's box. When the president paid
tribute to the parents in his speech, the Iraqi turned and quite
predictably embraced the sobbing mother.
Though he opposes filtration, Bush never hesitates to exploit national
security as a tool to suppress and distort information. Steve Aftergood,
head of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American
Scientists, describes the Bush administration's style as governance by
fear. In the name of national security, Bush has extended the authority
to classify information to the Department of Health and Human Services,
the Department of Agriculture, and the EPA, he says. After Sept. 11, his
attorney general issued a new directive making it easier for agencies to
reject Freedom of Information Act requests. Aftergood also criticizes
the secrecy of the Bush administration's task forces on energy, its
refusal to comply with congressional requests for information, and its
ambiguity on the torture question.
"They've propagated the idea that we're all at risk of violent death at
any moment and at any place, and we must all do everything we can to
secure our borders, ports, parks, and miniature golf courses," Aftergood
says.
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