Last week we discussed the incident involving three American warships and a few Iranian speedboats that made big, scary headlines when it was played as a threat by Iranians against the U.S. Navy. The small craft weren't armed with torpedoes or indeed with anything, and the Navy knew it. But in the media echo chamber, the incident seemed close to providing President Bush with the pretext he's been desperately seeking for a military hit against Iran.
The failed B movie from the Strait of Hormuz brings to mind another piece of stagecraft: the pictures of the president serving Thanksgiving turkey to troops in Iraq. Douglas Brinkley, speaking on CNN, told the nation it was "a perfectly executed plan" and would be "one of the major moments in [Bush's] biography."
The sad thing is, it may be. What few papers or TV channels reported is that the whole thing took place at the Baghdad airport; that Bush's entire time in Iraq only added up to two hours and thirty-two minutes; that the troops were forced to cram down the Thanksgiving feed at six in the morning; and that, according to one report, they were served at steam tables and didn't really eat the turkey Bush held so proudly. It was Thanksgiving dinner chez Potemkin, with our servicepeople as movie extras.
So viewers who cherished visions of Bush putting turkey on plates, hanging around to schmooze with the enlisted folk, maybe even sharing a peek at pinups in barracks, may need a 12-step program to help them get over the idea that presidential PR handlers operate according to common notions of good faith.
Then there was the shot of Bush in front of the cathedral of San Luiz in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina, promising to rebuild the city (a promise that shows no sign of being kept) amid atmospheric blue lighting worthy of the best Disney productions. And the never-to-be forgotten image of him on the deck of the destroyer under the sign proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" in 2003, when the dying of Iraqi nationals and American troops in Iraq was only getting started.
"We're an empire now, and we create our own reality," an unnamed White House official told reporter Ron Suskind in 2002. But it takes more than cameras and good backlighting and fat salaries for hack writers and media plants to create reality.
