| There’s something I need to confess. Three years ago in Fast Forward, I reviewed Big Wide Grin by Keb’ Mo’, an album consisting mostly of cover versions. I was scathing, unkind and less than gracious in my comments, eventually awarding the record 0/5 stars.
I’ve always felt bad about this. Playing Big Wide Grin again recently, I discovered that, while not a great record, it isn’t nearly as gruesome as I’d made it out to be. I wanted to apologize, to Keb’ Mo’ himself and to all his fans, but saying sorry wasn’t going to be enough. An act of penitence was called for.
And so, in this spirit, I subjected myself last week to watching the U.S. Republican Party convention in New York City.
For four days I sat in shock and awe as I, much like the Malcolm MacDowell character in Clockwork Orange, forced myself to watch the unfolding spectacle of horrors parading before my eyes. It wasn’t exactly Nuremberg ’38 all over again, but it came pretty darn close. The whole extravaganza was designed to celebrate the Bush regime’s own triumph of will, although triumph over just what or who perhaps remains to be seen.
To complete my public act of contrition, here are the highlights of the convention….
First, Rudolph Giuliani kicked things off by likening President George W. Bush to Winston Churchill. "Churchill saw the dangers of Hitler when his opponents and much of the press characterized him as a war-mongering gadfly," the former mayor of New York declared. "George W. Bush sees world terrorism for the evil that it is…." The Saddam Hussein = Hitler equation has been made before, of course, but it’s still a little tough to equate the specific geopolitical threat posed by Hitler in the 1930s with the vague spectre of "world terrorism" today.
It’s an uncomfortable parallel, anyway, since British voters ungratefully booted Churchill out of office once the Second World War was over. This, perhaps, is why Bush warned reporters prior to the convention that the war on terror could not be won, thus avoiding the prospect of a postwar backlash. A war without end, in other words.
Second, VP Dick Cheney and turncoat Democrat Zell Miller delivered a Smothers Brothers attack on John Kerry, calling Bush’s Democratic rival "more weak, more wrong and more wobbly" than any other national figure when it came to questions of national security, adding that he’d use military force "only if approved by the United Nations." Funny, that was exactly Bush’s position before and even up to the war on Iraq last year, until it became clear that the UN was not prepared to sanction the kind of war Bush had in mind.
More to the point, Republicans should be careful of using words like "weak" and "wobbly" when discussing war records. The increasing volatility of their attacks on Kerry’s service in Vietnam – notably the severity of his wounds and his receipt of three Purple Hearts – is hard to credit on a number of grounds: (a) Why are events of more than 30 years ago an issue anyway? (b) Do the Republicans really want to throw doubt on the whole process of who got medals and why? And (c), bottom line, only one of the two presidential candidates chose to stay at home as an upscale draft dodger, not because he was morally opposed to the war but because he was afraid of getting shot.
Third, lest we should think that Bush is a coward, we were treated to testimony from wife Laura and daughters Barbara and Jenna. Laura told us what a wonderful and caring husband George is, while Babs and Jen regaled the audience with stories of wealth and privilege before revealing that their parents’ pet name for each other is "Bushy." Too much information, girls…. Yet what else were they going to say – that George is a lousy husband and an indifferent father? Much like pop stars who publicly oppose world hunger, such statements carry weight only if we can imagine anyone actually saying anything different.
Fourth, a scarily orange-faced and Teflon-haired Arnold Schwarzenegger (a.k.a. the governor of California) babbled on about his childhood in communist Austria after the Second World War, complete with Soviet tanks rolling through the streets and rumours of soldiers whisking away family members and friends in the dead of night. (Austrian historians have been quick to note that this was impossible: Soviet troops left Austria before Arnie’s birth in 1947.) Then came his moment of political awakening, when he saw Richard Nixon on TV ("like a breath of fresh air") – presumably before Tricky Dicky’s fall from grace and power – after which Schwarzenegger ended with an asinine promise to "terminate the terrorists." All too weird.
Finally, there was Bush’s keynote address. Promises were made to "extend the frontiers of freedom" and that America would "stay on the offensive, striking at terrorists abroad, so that we do not have to face them at home." At the same time, Bush revived that forgotten clarion call of his first campaign to deliver "compassionate conservatism." "Governments should help people improve their lives, not try to run their lives," he declared. As a symbol of this compassion, Bush then promised to further privatize health care.
It doesn’t matter, really. Nothing that was said in New York matters. The meaningless sound-bites, the attacks on Kerry, Bush’s own half-mangled rhetoric – all of this is academic. As Bush told the audience, "Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called ‘walking.’" It’s that swagger, that self-assuredness that will propel Bush back into the White House this November.
It’s telling, after all, that the high-profile anti-Bush coalition (Michael Moore, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle et al.) has so far shown little enthusiasm for Kerry himself. Picking a Vietnam War vet to lead them was always a desperate ploy by the Democrats; Americans look set to stand by their most "fortunate son" instead.
They always do, they always will. |
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