| -Caveat Lector-
A voracious intellectual curiosity
about the world? Not quite.
This is the reason why many
people have come to the conclusion the George W. Bush is the least
intelligent, least competent and most embarrassing president in the history
of the United States:
Your local dogcatcher is probably
better informed about world affairs than George W. Bush.
The neocons couldn't have found an
easier mark to take to the cleaners.
Bush's Filtered News By Michael Kinsley To President Bush, the news is like a cigarette. You can get it filtered or
unfiltered. And which way does he prefer it? Well, that depends on the
circumstances. When he is trying to send a message to the public, Bush prefers
to have it go out unfiltered. He feels, for example, that the "good news about
Iraq" is getting filtered out by the national media. "Somehow you just got to go
over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people," he said the
other day. So, lately, he has been talking to local and regional media, which he
trusts to filter less. But when he is on the receiving end, Bush prefers his news heavily filtered.
"I glance at the headlines, just to get kind of a flavor," he told Brit Hume of
Fox News last month. But, "I rarely read the stories" because "a lot of times
there's opinions mixed in with news." Instead, "I get briefed by [White House
Chief of Staff] Andy Card and Condi [Rice, the national security adviser] in the
morning." The president concluded, "The best way to get the news is from objective
sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell
me what's happening in the world." Bush's beef about news from Iraq is a variation on the famous complaint that
the media never report about all the planes that land safely. And it's true:
Many American soldiers have not been killed since the war officially ended. You
rarely read stories about all the electricity that works, or the many Iraqis who
aren't shouting anti-American slogans. For that matter, what about all the
countries we haven't invaded and occupied in the past year? And what about the
unreported fact that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power? Well, maybe
that isn't actually unreported. But an unfilterish media would surely report it
again and again in every story every day, in case people forgot. Every president complains that the media are blocking his message, and the
media complain that every administration wants to manage the news. It's not only
presidents. Everyone who has something to say in our media-saturated culture
(and who doesn't?) longs for ways to get that message out unmediated by someone
else. In this media cacophony the president probably has more ability to deliver
his message without a filter than anyone else on Earth. Anything the president
says is automatically news. If he wants to commandeer all the TV networks for a
speech in prime time, he can usually do it. The president can even hold a news
conference, although this president rarely bothers. Bush also will have a campaign treasury of $170 million that he can spend in
the next year delivering any message he wants, completely unfiltered. Who can
top that? Well, until recently there was Saddam Hussein. He could talk as long
as he wanted and Iraqi TV never cut away for a commercial, let alone brought on
annoying pundits to pick and pick and pick. And the next day's Baghdad Gazette
would publish every single word, also without any tedious analysis. A few
others, such as Fidel Castro, still have this privilege. I was under the
impression that George W. Bush found this distasteful -- the sort of thing one
might even tighten a boycott or start a war over. Bush doesn't really want people to get the news unfiltered. He wants people
to get the news filtered by George W. Bush. Or, rather, he wants everyone to get
the news filtered by the same people who apparently filter it for him. It's an
interesting question how our president knows what he thinks he knows and why he
thinks it is less distorted than what the rest of us know or think we know.
Every president lives in a cocoon of advisers who filter reality for him, but
it's stunning that this president actually seems to prefer getting his take on
reality that way. Bush apparently thinks (if that is the word) that the publicly available
media contaminate the news with opinion but Condi Rice and Andy Card are
objective reporters. Anyone who has either been a boss or had a boss will find
it easier, knowing that Bush believes this, to understand how he can also
believe that things are going swimmingly in Iraq. And where does the Rice-Card
News Service obtain its uncontaminated information? Bush conceded his shocking
suspicion that Rice and Card "probably read the news themselves." They do?
Whatever's next? The president noted, though, that Rice and Card also get "news directly from
participants on the world stage." ("Hi, Ahmed -- it's Condi. What's going on
there in Baghdad? What's the weather like? And how's traffic? Thanks, I'll go
tell the president and call you again in 15 minutes.") The notion that these
world stagers are sources of objective information while newspaper reporters are
burdened by unsuppressible opinions and hidden agendas is another odd one. When it comes to unfiltered news, the president says he can dish it out and
actually brags that he can't take it. In fact, he can't do either one. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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