Our Counterfeit President
George
W. Bush isn't really a President, but he plays one on television.
From his "top gun" landing on an aircraft carrier to his "turkey
toting" in
Baghdad
, everything about the Counterfeit President is staged and fake.
By
Mick Youther
OpEdNews.Com
George W. Bush summed up his qualifications for elected office back in
1989:
" --I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation.
I've never done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil
business. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get
elected to public office."
George could coast through life because of his family's money and
influence. Someone was always there to help George jump to the front
of the line. There was always someone ready to bail him out from his
failed business dealings.
" "[George W. Bush] is probably the least qualified person ever to
be nominated by a major party. Yes, he was elected governor of
Texas
, and before that he ran a baseball team and lost a lot of other
people's money in the oil business. But what has happened in the
intervening five years to make people believe that George W. Bush
would be a good president? What is his accomplishment? That he's no
longer an obnoxious drunk?"-- Ron
Reagan Jr., quoted in Salon.com, 8/7/00
" "At some point, George W. Bush took a good long look at who he
was and what he wanted for the country and decided that the American
people would never buy it if he gave it to them straight."-- From
the book jacket of "Fraud: The Strategy Behind The Bush Lies And Why
The Media Didn't Tell You", Sourcebooks (2004)
" --Bush and his political machine made their decision: the
American people would have to be lied to. They would construct a
persona that would be everything Bush was not. They would take the
same reactionary agenda and cloak it in comforting catchphrases and
pleasing visuals, presenting to the public a false image of
sympathy."-- Buzzflash,
February 13, 2004
" -- George W. Bush's aw-shuck-isms, his monosyllabic
manglings of the language, his jerky gestures, all communicated well
to, first, a lot of Texans, and then to a lot Americans: Here's a
real guy. You can tell he's not comfortable in that suit in front of
all those namby-pamby liberal journalists, and that he's really just
ahankering to get into his Levi's and go check out the Back
Forty."-- Doc Cuddy, Magellan's
Log
" "Bush bought his ranch in 1999 as he was preparing his campaign
for the presidency. So while the images spell out '
Texas
man coming home to his ranch and the soil,' might the reality be
closer to 'Savvy politician manipulates the media with a well
thought-out backdrop'?"-- PRWeek
USA ,
9/3/01
>From his "top gun" landing on an aircraft carrier to his
"turkey toting" in
Baghdad
--everything about Bush is staged and fake. When we do get a rare
glimpse of the real George W. Bush amid the smoke and mirrors, it is
not a pretty picture.
" "Before he gave his national address announcing that the war had
begun, a camera caught Bush pumping his fist, as though instead of
initiating a war he had kicked a winning field goal or hit a home
run."-- Paul Waldman, author of
"Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media
Didn't Tell You", Salon.com,
2/10/04
" --George [W.] Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly
remember him. In my class, he declared that 'people are poor because
they are lazy.' He was opposed to labor unions, social security,
environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the
antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities
Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to 'free market
competition.' To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was
'socialism.'"-- Professor
Yoshi Tsurumi, Glocom Platform,
3/1/04
" "'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock
desperation, 'don't kill me.'"-- George
W. Bush, making fun of an executed Texas woman in an interview, quoted
in National Review, 8/30/99
" "Bush "is a hardened cynic, staging moral anguish he does
not feel, pandering to people he cannot possibly agree with and
sacrificing the future of many American citizens for short-term
political advantage. Is that a good enough reason to dislike him
personally?"--
Michael Kinsley
,
Washington
Post,
10/24/03
" "[2003 was] a year that waged open war on truth and facts and
celebrated fakes and forgeries of all kinds. This was the year when
fakeness ruled: fake rationales for war, a fake President dressed as a
fake soldier declaring a fake end to combat and then holding up a fake
turkey".casting real soldiers like Jessica Lynch as fake combat
heroes and dressing up embedded journalists as fake soldiers."-- Naomi
Klein, The Nation, January 8, 2004
Mick Youther is an Instructor in
the Department of Physiology at Southern Illinois University in
Carbondale, IL. You can email your comments to Mick@interventionmag.com
Originally published at www.interventionmag.com