The Desert of the Real

BlogMedia BurnNews | Published on June 09, 2008

This just in: a Los Angeles Times essay, pegged on former White House flack Scott McClellan's memoir, about the transformation of politics into a branch of special effects, and of the White House into a Hollywood backlot. The restless shades of Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays haunt the West Wing. But beyond this obvious point, I argue that the Bush administration's faith-based worldview, the logical terminus of Ronald Reagan's belief that "facts are stupid things," marks the official beginning of our age, the Unenlightenment.

Teaser:

Like no administration before it, the Bush administration has mastered what the media critic Walter Lippmann called "the manufacture of consent"---the use of what Lippmann called "psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication," to muster mass support for elite agendas. Staging photo ops whose choreographed drama and camera-ready visuals (Mission Accomplished!) are intended to play to the emotions and overrule objections; reducing complicated geopolitical issues to black-or-white dualisms (Team America: World Police versus the Axis of Evil!); stonewalling the media, cherrypicking military intelligence, and parroting the same Karl Rove-approved talking points---the Bush administration represents the apotheosis of government by spin control. Sure, sure, truth is the first casualty of war, and politics is just war with a smile and a starched collar. But this is the stuff of which doctoral dissertations on Baudrillard are made.

(Note: the LAT website is prone to link rot---nothing stays put for more than a week or two, seemingly---so you may have to plug the article headline---"McClellan's "Matrix" moment: Bush's former press secretary has stumbled out of a White House that lets political rhetoric shape reality"---into Google.)
Posted by Mark Dery at June 9, 2008 09:09 AM | | TrackBack

Mark, fantastic piece! I didn't know that quote from the NYT Magazine. Now that's putting a point on it. Amazing how the world becomes a closer and closer study of sci-fi movies as time goes on.

Posted by: Chris Burke at June 9, 2008 01:11 PM

You're too kind, Chris. The Suskind piece is just mind-meltingly great. Read it http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html
then read the SALON interview http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/10/20/ron_suskind/ with him. The man is a stepping razor.

Posted by: M. Dery at June 9, 2008 01:49 PM

Excellent piece, as usual. Where you been? I'm ready for some more Mark to read.

Posted by: Kelly at June 25, 2008 02:19 PM