The Joy of BushSpeak

If you're a fan of stunning contradictions, unctuous evasions, pathological denial, silly straw-man arguments, and, in general, oratorical sleaze of the highest order, then a Bush press conference is an all-in-one, must-see event. If you're in to pain, these spectacles always promise a frolicking good time – and never fail to deliver.

"Spin" doesn't begin to describe the other-worldliness of BushSpeak, since it is possible even for the low art of spin to contain something substantive at its core. What Bush serves up are merely baseless insults to human intelligence – a rhetorical modus operandi more properly described as carefree contempt for the audience.

In that his Rose Garden performance yesterday was as predictably contemptuous as ever, I sat and watched with almost as much contempt for the attending journalists. They politely asked their questions, dutifully chuckled at Bush's pathetic attempts at wit, then collectively resigned themselves to just letting things – the "answers" – slide. Watchdogs of democracy? Hardly. Just lapdogs, to use Eric Boehlert's title description.

Most of the morning's hour-long press conference was devoted to (weak)Q&(even weaker)As on North Korea and Iraq, which meant most of the hour was more productively spent watching "The Price is Right." At least it has some suspense and you'll learn the actual price of a Whirlpool freezer.

But if you find yourself wondering about things a bit weightier, such as "recent doubts expressed by senior Republicans, including Sen. John W. Warner (Va.) and former secretary of state James A. Baker III, about the current U.S. course in Iraq," don't look to the man in charge of that course to clarify it or inspire confidence in it.

"We're constantly changing tactics to achieve a strategic goal," said the president, without noting – and without being pressed to note – a solitary change. And all that oft-derided "stay the course" business? How ever did folks get the idea that was the lone, or principal, strategy? No, no, no. That was just part of the big-picture plan. "My attitude is," as Bush put it in flagrant contradiction of three selfsame years, "'Don't do what you're doing if it's not working. Change.'"

So we mistakenly thought the overall strategy was "stay the course," but it's not – never has been; although Bush "said the overall strategy in Iraq is sound," which has been, and is, what? Who the hell knows? It was, after all, just a news conference.

As for the North Korean crisis, Bush was just as keen in allaying doubts, the press just as aggressive in demanding accountability:

"I learned a lesson from [President Clinton's bilateral talks], and decided that the best way to convince Kim Jong Il to change his mind on a nuclear weapons program is to have others send the same message." Hence Clinton's policy failed, but failed to fail in the "best way"? If you were waiting for journalistic hot pursuit of that fatuousness, well, good luck and good night.

There was plenty else to entertain – untrue cracks about Democratic objections to Bush's tax cuts; "rich people" being a "code word" [sic] for hiking taxes on everyone; utterly deceptive boasting about "cutting" the federal budget deficit to a mere $248 billion, which, of course, is $248 billion more than promised; and so on, and so on ... and so it went.

Bush did say one thing that I think I understood."The inability to convince people to move forward speaks volumes about them." The comment was intended as a pointed charge against those pesky North Koreans, but perhaps it also slipped out as a touch of Freudian self-diagnosis.

Comments

[Jay Randal]

Bush is "Big Brother" forewarned in the 1984 book, by George Orwell, but he never told us the supreme leader would be a crazy fool and a dork too!

[Jay Randal]

Bush is "Big Brother" forewarned in the 1984 book, by George Orwell, but he never told us the supreme leader would be a crazy fool and a dork too!

[Zee]

We should innundate the WH press with Milk Bones.

[Vic Anderson]

It's MIRRORSPEAK, for whatever the Big Brother Bushists accuse their opponents of, they invariably are, or are doing themselves! Or see, can they say: BIG LIE?

[Maezeppa]

Great piece. At least that Bush-lover Suzanne Malveaux implied in her question that Bush failed and it forced him to dance around about how he didn't personally know of any "new" nukes.

This is off-topic but I keep asking people this question: we keep hearing about 'dog whistle' messaging, phrases that are meaningless to most folks but significant to extreme Christain cults. What are these codes and phrases exactly?

[DeAnna]

Secret extreme Christian Cult code phrase number one:

Stay the course = All the way to Armageddon...

Ummmmm.....an objective.....a plan.....

But.....don't mind all my blether about the crackpot evangeliban apocalypse now shite......

But consider.....Perhaps.....what is occurring.....is exactly what was planned.....?

Well gee......who knew?

[person of interest]

We need to Revolt..The coming rigged election, will put us to the test, to see if we are deserving of liberty....The founding fathers would have already burned this fascist out of the white house