That’s why Bush didn’t throw the ball out of the first game this MLB season. It’s not that he had brush to clear or rights to take away or exculpate polluters. He and his handlers know that unless he is standing in front of hand picked donors or octogenarian veterans or the American Enterprise Institute than he can’t control the crowd.
He knows that he will get booed.
The only folks ( and I use that term loosely) who are not on board with this are in the media.
Bush botched the war and spies on Americans and has people tortured. There is nothing you can do to make these disasters look good. You can’t spin bloodshed.
The Gulf Coast is still in ruins while our tax dollars are headed to the Mideast and our heavy left helicopters are getting shot down in Iraq. You can’t hide a whole region.
People are not making that much money. The Labor Department cooks reports on unemployment and millions of jobs created are still less than the 140K we need a month. You can’t make half a glass seem like a whole glass.
Veterans are getting the shittiest shoddiest treatment. You can’t distract people from this fact, even if they happen to know no one headed to combat theatre or on the way back.
Bush is a liar. He has lied dozens of times and there is no way that Americans with three brain cells to run together will ever really trust him. His cronies are all liars and criminals. They lie every single day. People may be misinformed, but they are not stupid. Bush’s lies: You can’t pundit them away. You can make sure that critics aren’t invited to PR events. You can forbid protesters from being seen by the President. But you win no points for this sort of open repression.
It was almost impossible to find dispassionate jurors for the Libby Scooter trial because, as defense and prosecutorial attorneys noted the contempt for Bush is so widespread and intense. Across the world, in Europe in particular, Anti- Bushism is more palatable than Islam, Socialism, Capitlaism or any movement you can think of. You cannot make this seem like a small thing when most of the whole world hates you and your leaders.
Bush cannot go anywhere in America without a whole secret army of police and SWAT teams and military escorts. You cannot safely have Bush appear anywhere in public without a police screening of the area. Cheney also engenders a certain vivid antipathy that Satan himself would not produce. This cannot be disappeared. It can’t be muted like booing at a baseball game. It can’t have its microphone cut off. It can’t be surrounded and drowned out.
The palpable hate for Bush keeps him separated from real Americans. I remember when Clinton came to Austin, he just waded into the crowd and people loved him. Bush could no more wade into a crowd anywhere in the world anymore than a can of gasoline can wade into a fire without exploding.
The news, such as it is, the mainstream media caca that we endure is a chummy group of people and companies that gave up their distance and objectivity for access and high falutin martinis in posh Washington clubs. People like Charles Krauthammer and even David Gregory think they are can dance and drink with the same people they are reporting on.
They cannot. They can. But few believe them.
There are things you simply cannot put lipstick on. The public sees the disaster that the War on Terror has become. The public knows that our schools do not compare with the schools around the world. The public knows they have to take their shoes off at the airport because that’s what they are told to do. The American public may not be tiring of hearing about Anna Nicole. But the American public doesn’t truly trust the news. So while the news may have increased it ratings- it has decreased its believability. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot report on crap all day and then call yourself a news bureau.
That said, the public more and more gets their information from blogs and other internet tools. Why? Are people going online and getting more Anna Nicole news? No they are going online and getting their news.
It astonishes me to see this administration unravel. It astonishes me to see the incredulous looks on the faces of the Bush and his cronies when they come across criticism. It astonishes me how deftly they brush off their crimes and think it will all be over in a couple of years,.
As I mentioned, Americans may be misinformed. But they are not stupid. They do not like Bush. They do not trust Bush. He knows it. His cronies know it. And as uncomfortable as this promises to be, they will see the last two years, and probably the rest of their lives as pariahs for what they have wrought.