Frank Rich vs. The White House Propaganda Factory

Here's my review of Frank Rich's THE GREATEST STORY EVER SOLD" that I posted on Amazon today.

There's a new twist on Amazon -- people can leave comments on reviews. The first comment I got was from someone who claims that the United States is practically the only democracy left, then called me a "bad American" and "Bushophobic." Read my review and see if you agree!

That's Showbiz!, September 19, 2006

In THE GREATEST STORY EVER SOLD, Frank Rich amply proves that in these United States, we no longer have a functioning democracy but instead a taxpayer-funded theatrical enterprise which serves up to an increasingly restless public endless variations of cynical melodrama designed to scare the American people into submission, neutralize opponents, and surreptitiously realize big profits for its investors in the military-industrial-energy complex.

As long-time theater critic at the New York Times, Frank Rich is clearly better suited to seeing though the stagecraft of the Bush administration than the so-called "hard news" reporters like those in the stage-struck White House press corps. Reporters like the New York Times' Judith Miller, for example, who swallowed the Nigerian yellow cake uranium melodrama hook, line and sinker, and credulously fell for one red herring after another.

Hypnotized by their front row access to the White House melodrama and the threat of losing it, Rich argues that hard news reporters were played for suckers in the run up to the war by the morality play presidency of George W. Bush. The White House press corps became invested in the story, Rich argues, perpetuating the story line and profiting from it in the form of a rapt readership, and high ratings. The apocalyptic story line of a smoking gun that would become a mushroom cloud was just too sensational to pass up.

Rich wrote in an editorial a week before he went on sabbatical to write his book: "The highest priority for the Karl Rove-driven presidency is...to preserve its own power at all costs. With this gang, political victory and the propaganda needed to secure it always trump principles, even conservative principles, let alone the truth. Whenever the White House most vociferously attacks the press, you can be sure its No. 1 motive is to deflect attention from embarrassing revelations about its incompetence and failures."

As much as I am grateful for Rich's book and his columns -- one of the last voices, along with Paul Krugman's, of the Times' once-proud bourgeoisie brownstone liberal tradition -- I find myself shaking my head at the notion that the Bush administration might be "embarrassed" by its "incompetence and failures." One can only be embarrassed at incompetence and failure if you believe you have been shown to be incompetent or to have failed. But since this production is designed only to line its investors' pockets with loot, and has been doing so very nicely, there is no reason for embarrassment.

The Bush troupe, cynically directed by Karl Rove, while not capable of embarrassment, is, as Rich points out, very good at sniffing the political winds and sensing what its audience needs. As Rich says, depending on the situation, Rove will put on a new performance to draw attention elsewhere, and/or shine a harsh interrogatory spotlight on those who dare to respond to their latest offering with a sigh, a snort, or a Bronx cheer. Rove is particularly adept at creating villains as foils to an heroic Bush. While it's nothing new -- the divide and conquer melodrama has been big box office for Republicans and conservatives since Joe McCarthy came up with the formula back in the 50s - Rove has refined the stagecraft, sharpened the script into soundbites.

Recall if you will Bush's "inability" to admit to making any mistakes in his Presidency a few years ago under questioning at a White House press conference. Many commentators saw that as an example of Bush's unwillingness to examine a new set of facts, draw new conclusions and make new plans. But, in fact, Bush was playing his role of heroic common man perfectly, "catapulting the propaganda" over the heads of elites to his real audience - those true believers who embrace with all their hearts the Rovian melodrama of the strong, tough hero.

The problem with a steady diet of melodrama, of course, is that after a while the audience begins to lose interest. At some point, as Mr. Bush's poll numbers suggest, the tear-jerking and fear-jerking no longer work. The Manichaean plot becomes ever more apparent and the players are at last revealed as stick figures, as puppets, as empty ciphers in the service of the deus ex machina.

Perhaps even Mr. Bush has at last grown tired of the limited role of cock-sure, tough-talking, God-loving hero, the stock character he and director Rove artfully recycled from movie westerns, dime novels and tall tales: recently Mr. Bush told Brian Williams of NBC that he read "three Shakespeare's" and "The Stranger" during his summer vacation.

The final tragic message of THE GREATEST STORY EVER SOLD is that the curtain on this base melodrama could have come down years ago had only the "reviewers" in the American press corps and the Congress been doing their jobs for the American people. Frank Rich has done his job from the very beginning of this longest running melodrama in American political history. Thankfully, he continues to do so.

The Sorrows of Neo-Colonialism

Here's my Amazon review of "The Places In Between" by Rory Stewart, a remarkable book by a remarkable man.

Walking To Enlightenment, August 27, 2006

Serendipitously, I finished Rudyard Kipling's masterpiece, KIM, on the same day I read the NY TIMES review of Rory Stewart's THE PLACES IN BETWEEN, a review that was so compelling that I bought the book that very Sunday.

Serendipitous because there are many remarkable resonances between Stewart's narrative of his walk from Herat to Kabul in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion in 2002 and Kim O'Hara's fictional walk along India's Grand Trunk Road during the period circa 1900 known as The Great Game -- the struggle between Britain and Russia for control of Central Asia.

In both works we find the omnipresent influence of religion upon the social and political spheres. Interestingly, in KIM, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists of many sects mingle with one another inside the discipline of an ancient feudal caste system, (a system the British adroitly exploited for economic gain). By Stewart's time, however, the Taliban's religious fundamentalism has violently undone the tradition of tolerance and hospitality.

Then, on a more mundane level, in both works, we encounter civilizations where distance is calibrated by a day's journey on foot. Both "characters" walk ancient routes dotted with caravanserai, roadside inns where travelers could rest and recover from the day's journey. In Stewart's case, these shelters are mostly abandoned; it is often the mosque that is now the way station. In Kim's world, the shelters and markets are teeming with travelers from far away places who trade stories, foods, goods, songs, jokes, and often hilarious verbal abuse. That Stewart is told by Afghani officials he will likely be killed during his walk is indicative of how much this ancient culture has changed.

In an arresting footnote (pgs. 247-248), Stewart, after reading a post-war development plan for Afghanistan when he arrives in Kabul, remarks that "Critics have accused this new brand of administrators of neo-colonialism," then goes on to say "Colonial administrators may have been racist and exploitative, but they did at least work seriously at the business of understanding the people they were governing."

That is certainly the case of the British in India as described by Kipling in KIM. Kim himself simultaneously takes up the roles of spy for the British and novice to a Tibetan Buddhist lama. Kim can dutifully attend a Catholic school for children of colonial officers where he becomes a skilled surveyor, then during vacations disappear into India's teeming masses of beggars, holy men, and traders -- the familiar life he grew up in as the orphan of a British soldier. In this, he is a perfect instrument of both British military intelligence, and, ironically, the questing Chinese lama whom he guides through the rough and tumble world of street thieves, beggars and mountebanks to a prophesied river of forgiveness and enlightenment.

The new neo-colonialists, Stewart suggests, have one plan for every developing country, a plan that is based on a modern "fundamentalism" -- the infallibility of the Free Market. And when this ideology fails, Stewart notes, as it has failed in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the new neo-colonialist administrators pack up their bags and move on to the next international hotspot, touting the same panacea despite its repeated failure to take hold. This kind of failure would never have been tolerated among earlier colonial empires; it may be emblematic of America's schizophrenic, impatient, inconsistent brand of imperialism.

In THE PLACES IN BETWEEN we see the vestiges of an ancient civilization, its passing hurried by the new version of The Great Game which demands adherence to the universalist creed of economic freedom. Common human decency, once supported by the strictures of Islam that demanded among its followers hospitality to strangers, is fading fast as the project for a new American century polarizes and radicalizes traditional cultures everywhere.

Whether you read it as an adventure, a travelogue, a guide to what's happened and what's happening in Afghanistan, THE PLACES IN BETWEEN is truly a remarkable achievement.

Prating Priests, Miscreant Managers

Here's my Amazon review of "FIASCO: The American Military Adventure in Iraq" by Thomas E. Ricks.

I wrote it a couple of weeks ago, before Rove kicked the 9/11 Fear Machine into high gear for the mid-term elections.

FIASCO is a potent antidote to the base fear mongering that the Bush gang is now fully engaged in. Highly, highly recommended.

Walking Toward Wisdom, August 26, 2006

From the first page, it is clear why Thomas Ricks' FIASCO has climbed to the top of bestseller lists. In the highly politicized public debate on Iraq, Ricks is an authoritative voice reporting facts -- facts that were in such short supply in the run up to the war, in the wake of the invasion, and even now three and a half years later.

Facts, we learn in agonizing detail, were pushed aside or fabricated to support the invasion. Invasion plans developed under the Clinton administration, detailed plans that anticipated an insurgency and had contingencies for dealing with it were ignored. The post-invasion plan developed by the Bush administration on the other hand, was a confused PowerPoint presentation of 15 or so slides which offered nothing to the commanders on the ground but bullet-pointed jargon.

As Ricks tells us at the outset: "None of this was inevitable. It was made possible only through the intellectual acrobatics of simultaneously 'worst-casing' the threat present by Iraq while 'best-casing' the subsequent cost and difficulty of occupying the country."

As you read FIASCO don't be surprised if you find yourself having to take frequent walks around the block to blow off a little steam. The exercise will do you good, and as you walk you may finally come to feel in your very bones as I have the vast ideological arrogance of the neo-con priesthood which argued for the war and the malevolent managerial incompetence of the Bush administration which had no plan to win the peace.