Re; Dove feathers in the President's mouth etc

[Dave Monroe]

Again, see ...

Miller, Mark Crispin.  The Bush Dyslexicon:
   Observations on a National Disorder.  Rev. ed.
   New York: W.W. Norton, 2002 [2001].
   
"The Bush Dyslexicon is a raucously funny ride—whether
it's Bush envisioning 'a foreign-handed foreign
policy' or Miller skewering vociferous cultural
conservatives like William Bennett and Lynne Cheney
for their silence on Bush's particular 'West Texas
version of Ebonics.' But there is also a strong
undercurrent of outrage. Only because our elections
have become so dependent on television and its
emphatic emptiness, says Miller, could a man of such
sublime and complacent ignorance assume the highest
office in the land."

http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring02/032296.htm

"George W. Bush is really not the grinning simpleton
that TV has presented to us—a caricature that only
serves to idealize our unelected president, however
cruelly it's been rendered. The dim bulb played by
Will Ferrell on 'Saturday Night Live,' and roasted
nitely by Leno, Letterman, O'Brien and the rest, and
satirized by countless political cartoonists, is, on
the one hand, an appalling figure—the sort of idiot
prince who might slouch in the throne of some
exhausted monarchy, perhaps, but who should never sit
in charge of our democracy. While shockingly out of
his depth, however, that plain half-wit is himself
benign—a danger only insofar as evil others might
manipulate him .... For all his faults, that butt is
kind of 'likeable,' a simpleton as genial, blithe and
innocent as Alfred E. Neuman (with whom our President
has often been compared). He may be dumb, in other
words, but he's not ambitious, and he's a real nice
fella, wouldn't hurt a fly.

"The overall good-naturedness of that cartoonish image
has been subtly amplified by Bush's own public
response to such derision. Like all postmodern
politicians from Ronald Reagan on, this Bush has
understood that, in the culture of TV, there is no
balm like Self-Effacing Humor. However much the satire
galls him, he has so far blunted the attack by seeming
to take part in it himself.... such self-parody has no
subversive edge at all. Far from being self-critical,
in fact, the politician who cracks wise about himself
(it seems to be a male thing, by and large, is
actually thereby betraying a certain shamelessness,
both in himself and in the culture that sits laughing
with him. 

"And so to snicker at this President for his stupidity
is not productive; for his unfitness isn't really
funny—and in any case he isn't stupid. True, he is the
most uneducated President in U.S. history, and
probably the most illiterate, and easily among the
least concerned about the contents of his mind.
Although he is as overwhelmed as he appears, however,
this President is not as dim-witted-or as
easy-going-as TV has made him out to be. That first
impression now requires a clear corrective; for, as he
might say, we misunderestimate him at our peril."

http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring01/bushexcerpt.htm

--- Paul Nightingale <isread at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> I think what I was getting at was precisely Bush's
> image as a cowboy with no class as seen by the
> Eastern establishment.... 

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