The Red Cross Knight

When the CBS memo fiasco hit the fan last September, David Neiwert worried that Dan Rather and his producers' screw up "probably destroyed any chance that there will be a serious discussion of Bush's military record.  By bungling the story, they have made it radioactive."

If that hadn't been the case, CBS' defenestration of the producers responsible and Dan Rather's withdrawl into exile has certainly made it so now.

Even though the story itself was basically true and only the memos were faked, an awful lot of people will be convinced that it was all made up and that George W. Bush's National Guard record was smeared by the media in ways worse than what the Swift Boat Liars did to John Kerry's record in Vietnam.

As if they needed convincing.

An awful lot of people seem to believe that when he was in the Guard, Bush was somehow single-handedly saving the nation from simultaneous attacks from the Viet Cong, the Chinese, and the Rooskies while John Kerry was lounging about a hotel pool in Saigon with Jane Fonda.

At any rate they react to any attempt to impugn Georgie's service record with far greater outrage and indignation than John Kerry could muster on his own behalf when the Swift Boat Liars first sailed out to attack his record.

I think they need to believe that Georgie was a hero back then because it helps them believe he's a hero now.

It's all a little hazy, but it's a fact that back when it was morning in America the media fawned disgustingly over Ronald Reagan.  They fawned over Nixon too, when he was opening China and the Soviet Union and "ending" the war in Vietnam.  The media has fawned over every popular President---except Bill Clinton---up until the point where they stopped being popular.

The main difference between their fawning over Nixon and Reagan is that both men actually had virtues and accomplishments worth praising, if not fawning over.  Georgie has screwed up royally from the day he was inaugurated, and yet the media can't crawl before him low enough to make themselves happy.

The other difference is that Nixon, for a little while, and Reagan, for the fat middle of his Presidency, were truly popular.

Bush ain't.

Never was.

Never will be.

9/11, notwithstanding.

Christopher Caldwell, senior editor at that commie propaganda sheet The Weekly Standard, pointed out at the time right after the attacks that polls showing Bush with Reaganesque approval ratings needed to be taken with a grain of salt.

Caldwell said that when people were asked whether or not they supported the President they heard the question as something like "Do you want to defeat the terrorists and bring home Osama bin Laden's head on a stick?"

In other words an awful lot of people who didn't like or think well of George Bush were rallying around him because he was the President and that's what patriotic Americans do in a time of crisis.  They rally round.

When it turned out that George Bush wasn't up to being rallied round, and in fact didn't want anyone who disagreed with him on issues that had nothing to do with the war on terra to rally round, his poll numbers dropped.  And dropped.  And dropped some more.  And continue to drop.

There's probably a floor beyond which those numbers won't fall, although when he finally decides to pull the troops out of Iraq and it's clear that he lost his little war, I suspect we'll find out just how far below that floor is.

Many loyal Republicans and conservatives will always need to believe that the man they made President deserves their respect and support.  The fact that he clearly does not will make them only more desperate to believe that he is.

And we are at war, and it's only natural for people to look for a hero to lead them.  That's part of the job, to be nobler and braver than the troops.

One of the women who survived the battle of the Alamo said that the real leader inside the mission was not Col Travis but Davy Crockett.  It was Crockett who kept up the defenders' morale and, it was also reported, it was Crockett who went about "to every exposed point and personally directed the fighting."

In times of extreme danger, we'd all rather have Davy Crockett in charge, if we can find him.

It helps the rest of us act up to the Crockett inside us.

Now it's clear to most people that the only thing George W. Bush has in common with Davy Crockett is that both of them spent some time in Texas.

That's not a problem for Democrats.  We don't need our Davy Crocketts to be Republicans.  (We still want to be led by Davy Crockett, it's just that we have some trouble recognizing him when he comes along.  We keep expecting him to look and talk like Jack Kennedy.)  But for the rest of the country, George Bush is all they got.

Which explains why they are so desperate to think he's a hero they pretty much make things up about him.

It doesn't explain why the media does it.

But they do.

I wouldn't mind it half so much if they were content with claiming that Georgie is our Crockett, or Churchill, or Teddy Roosevelt, or whoever.  But they aren't.  They go further.  They collude in passing Georgie off as not just a hero but a saint.  The living patron saint of America.  Our own St. George, the Red Cross Knight sallying forth personally to slay the dragon with the face of Osama or Saddam or John Kerry or Jacques Chirac or whatever devil the Right needs to villify this week.

Actually, they go even farther sometimes, a mere saint not being a saintly enough symbol to convey the holiness of the blessed Dubya.

If you missed it the first time round, here's a piece of Matt Tiabbi's tirade in New York Press when Time named St Georgie "Person of the Year:"

The "Person of the Year" issue has always been a symphonic tribute to the heroic possibilities of pompous sycophancy, but the pomposity of this year's issue bests by a factor of at least two or three the pomposity of any previous issue. From the Rushmorean cover portrait of Bush (which over the headline "An American Revolutionary" was such a brazen and transparent effort to recall George Washington that it was embarrassing) to the "Why We Fight" black-and-white portraiture of the aggrieved president sitting somberly at the bedside of the war-wounded, this issue is positively hysterical in its iconolatry. One even senses that this avalanche of overwrought power worship is inspired by the very fact of George Bush's being such an obviously unworthy receptacle for such attentions. From beginning to end, the magazine behaves like a man who knocks himself out making an extravagant six-course candlelit dinner for a blow-up doll, in an effort to convince himself he's really in love.

James Wolcott commented, with rousing approval, on Tiabbi's column, and added, noting how Time quoted, with rousing approval, some sycophatic Bush Leaguer simpering an explicit comparison between Christianity's chief martyr and our sainted President:

I can't see Bush being crucified for his beliefs--he'd probably send someone else in his place while he shelled peas or had his cowboy boots re-toed. And being named Time's Person of the Year (twice) makes for a pretty soft persecution. After all, Jesus suffered for our sins. Everyone else suffers for Bush's.

But the very fact that Time can relay such religiose twaddle without blushing or gagging is proof of how far the so-called Mainstream Media--or MSM, as I've seen it abbreviated on certain blog-warrior sites--has slid, or as Dizzy Dean would say, slud. Just the other day the Daily News ran yet another photo of Bush with his head framed and backlit against the presidential seal as if it were a halo.

When I was growing up Catholic, we had saintly portraits of Jesus and JFK in the living room. But we never confused the two.

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[mac macgillicuddy]

Yeah...what he said!