Tsunamis of Publicity
Tomgram: Constantino, Tsunamis of Publicity
There's an old joke about a meeting between two men, one of whom is an egomaniac. The egomaniac yaks on endlessly about himself, not giving the other man a chance to get in a word. Finally, he stops and says, "But enough about me. What about you? What do you think of me?"
Sometimes it seems that our country lives in just such a solipsistic world, always staring into a mirror which shows us at our well-lighted best. So it has been since not soon after the Sumatran undersea earthquake and then tsunami struck. Following upon the first miniscule post-tsunami aid offer from Washington and the silence from Crawford, the President emerged to hold an exceedingly defensive news conference in which he launched what would quickly become a continuing mantra of praise for us as a generous, kindhearted people. His representatives then fanned out through the media and across the world offering the same wisdom. We are, it was said over and over, generous and kindhearted, not to speak of kindhearted and generous. We are the best. The tops. No one more than us. Television news, which swarmed on the casualties of nature's tsunami (as they have not on those created by the Bush administration's man-made version of the same in Iraq), seems to have finished! off the PR job with plenty of self-praise and lots of shots of saved children waving at American military helicopters -- the sort of thing we've been evidently been starved for in Iraq.
It's a strange phenomenon really. Few evidently find it faintly unseemly that one of the great natural catastrophes in memory should be a publicity occasion for the Bush administration to pump up the American people mainly, it seems, to pump up itself. It's true, after all, that, like people the world over, Americans were deeply unnerved, disturbed, and moved by the tsunami horrors they saw and, from movie stars like Sandra Bullock (who donated $1 million to the Red Cross for tsunami relief) to Americans in all walks of life, contributions poured in. It's this that the administration is so ready to give, and take, credit for -- to horn in on really -- and it's very much of our age. Have you noticed, for instance, how rare is the anonymous donor these days? No donation by the rich and powerful (or their wannabes) ever seems to go uncredited any more -- from seatbacks in theaters ! to the smallest wings of wings of buildings.
And yet when it came down to demonstrating a little actual American generosity, it turned out that the Bush administration had not the slightest urge -- not, at least, if anything it cared about needed to be sacrificed in the process. After all, in the midst of tsunami and war, our warrior president is holding a series of gala inaugural extravaganzas that represent a $40 million-plus outpouring of (corporate) generosity, and the White House doesn't plan to give up a single one of those nine inaugural balls, not certainly for Indonesian survivors, as this typically evasive exchange with presidential spokesperson Trent Duffy indicates:
"Q Given the cost of aid to Asia, the cost of the war, is there any thought being given to toning down some of the lavish inaugural activities?
"MR. DUFFY: I think the inaugural activities are paid for out of private contributions, not governmental funds. I would refer you to the Inaugural Committee for an answer for that."
…not for armoring American vehicles in Iraq, as the following exchange between the New York Times Magazine's Deborah Solomon and Jeanne L. Phillips, the chairwoman of the 55th Presidential Inaugural Committee, makes clear (It's the President's Party):
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
There's an old joke about a meeting between two men, one of whom is an egomaniac. The egomaniac yaks on endlessly about himself, not giving the other man a chance to get in a word. Finally, he stops and says, "But enough about me. What about you? What do you think of me?"
Sometimes it seems that our country lives in just such a solipsistic world, always staring into a mirror which shows us at our well-lighted best. So it has been since not soon after the Sumatran undersea earthquake and then tsunami struck. Following upon the first miniscule post-tsunami aid offer from Washington and the silence from Crawford, the President emerged to hold an exceedingly defensive news conference in which he launched what would quickly become a continuing mantra of praise for us as a generous, kindhearted people. His representatives then fanned out through the media and across the world offering the same wisdom. We are, it was said over and over, generous and kindhearted, not to speak of kindhearted and generous. We are the best. The tops. No one more than us. Television news, which swarmed on the casualties of nature's tsunami (as they have not on those created by the Bush administration's man-made version of the same in Iraq), seems to have finished! off the PR job with plenty of self-praise and lots of shots of saved children waving at American military helicopters -- the sort of thing we've been evidently been starved for in Iraq.
It's a strange phenomenon really. Few evidently find it faintly unseemly that one of the great natural catastrophes in memory should be a publicity occasion for the Bush administration to pump up the American people mainly, it seems, to pump up itself. It's true, after all, that, like people the world over, Americans were deeply unnerved, disturbed, and moved by the tsunami horrors they saw and, from movie stars like Sandra Bullock (who donated $1 million to the Red Cross for tsunami relief) to Americans in all walks of life, contributions poured in. It's this that the administration is so ready to give, and take, credit for -- to horn in on really -- and it's very much of our age. Have you noticed, for instance, how rare is the anonymous donor these days? No donation by the rich and powerful (or their wannabes) ever seems to go uncredited any more -- from seatbacks in theaters ! to the smallest wings of wings of buildings.
And yet when it came down to demonstrating a little actual American generosity, it turned out that the Bush administration had not the slightest urge -- not, at least, if anything it cared about needed to be sacrificed in the process. After all, in the midst of tsunami and war, our warrior president is holding a series of gala inaugural extravaganzas that represent a $40 million-plus outpouring of (corporate) generosity, and the White House doesn't plan to give up a single one of those nine inaugural balls, not certainly for Indonesian survivors, as this typically evasive exchange with presidential spokesperson Trent Duffy indicates:
"Q Given the cost of aid to Asia, the cost of the war, is there any thought being given to toning down some of the lavish inaugural activities?
"MR. DUFFY: I think the inaugural activities are paid for out of private contributions, not governmental funds. I would refer you to the Inaugural Committee for an answer for that."
…not for armoring American vehicles in Iraq, as the following exchange between the New York Times Magazine's Deborah Solomon and Jeanne L. Phillips, the chairwoman of the 55th Presidential Inaugural Committee, makes clear (It's the President's Party):
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 1:37 PM
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