Posted by dholland
on January 19, 2009, 8:23 pm
68.4.41.101
Please accept my commentary titled "In Praise of Blame" for you consideration. The piece humorously takes on the Bush White House's attempt to makeover George W. Bush's legacy as he leaves office.
In Praise of Blame
The American makeover is in again. Not that it was ever out--F. Scott Fitzgerald knew the makeover’s power and its pathos and captured both by delineating James Gatz’s transformation into The Great Gatsby way back in the 1920's--but one could argue that this current trend has ballooned to such proportions as to make Gatsby's lavish parties look like back door barbeques. After all, what is American Idol if not a show in which we eagerly observe the scruffy unkowns as they are remade into the slickest of pop slicksters? Truly, what could be more inescapably American than our collective delight in playing the role of Pygmalion, in beautifying the drab and glossily reshaping the undesirably average?
And why not? A certain willful glee at wearing rose-colored glasses has always played an essential role in this the most eternally optimistic and tenaciously forgetful of countries. We have never skimped when it comes to putting, for want of a better term, lipstick on a pig. When in doubt, we say, err on the side of gooey fantasy, but harsh reality, well come back when you’ve lost a couple pounds. Have we not affixed the term “reality TV” to a genre of entertainment that everyone agrees contains no actual reality. And so we rage against the dieing of the wishfully enhanced truth, continuing to watch our home makeover shows, our weight makeover shows, and even our all-purpose makeover shows-also known as The Oprah Show. What’s the harm?
As you’ve probably already guessed, I’m about to tell you. Most makeovers, at their very core, are as phony as a weekend in Rehab--something every young Hollywood actress with issues knows. They are manufactured, cosmetic events made for quick consumption of a too-busy-to-notice public. Strictly speaking, they are often incredibly non-transformative, meaning they enable the same old problems to masquerade as new and improved. Which is no biggie whatsoever when we are dealing with pop culture buffoonery. Come on, we all know that half those characters on The Biggest Loser gain back the weight, don’t we?
The problem arises when makeovers are PR moves used by everyone from white-collar criminals to former (or sitting) presidents of the United States. In other words, this craze has reached the highest levels of our society and become a sort of get-out-of-jail free card, alleviating the holder of any memory of or responsibility for his or her previous actions. Consequently, we have lost touch with one of the most essential tools for keeping the foxes out of the hen house: good ole’ fashion blame. And, therefore, instead of nailing the slippery critters once and for all, we are made to bare witness to their raids on our truth again and again.
Look, for example, at the political makeover phenomenon. Nixon made it look so easy, that even Rob Blagojevich, the embattle governor of Illinois, thinks he’s got a shot at immaculate political rebirth. And then, of course, there is our departing president. Imagine a culture where no one has to take responsibility for their mistakes, where gross errors aren’t cause for alarm or deep introspection, and where equivocation is king and euphemism is queen. This is the culture of the Bush White House. But fear not, the makeover fairies have already begun their work.
The blitzkrieg of revisionism began over a month ago when W. was sent to cuddle up beside the likes of Charlie Gibson for a fire-side chat to warm our hearts and lobotomize our minds. For starters, our 43rd president maintained that the decisions that lead to the Wall Street catastrophe were made “a decade” before he ever took office. Sounds a little dodgy, but he was just warming up. How about this one: The many American casualties in Iraq and the incredible job loss across America “concerned him,” but he didn’t seem to feel especially interested in either. It was, of course, unclear if he had any concern or interest at all for the 97,000 Iraqi civilians who have been killed since our invasion in 2003. Other epiphanies he related to Larry King and bevy of equally toothless broadcasters basically amounted to Bush reminding us that the world is a safer place since he put the kibosh on our civil liberties, and that, as deciders go, he wasn’t afraid to make bad, horribly short-sighted decisions. It’s called legacy building, and it requires large doses of nostalgia, and the sort of blind optimism that in no way coincides with the truth.
In short, Mr. Bush is wearing a pair of the highest powered rose-colored glasses ever known to man, and he’d like to give you a pair. Please do not accept. To allow such an extreme alteration of fact is to glue ourselves to this same historical spot and disallow the real change that Barack Obama represents. The sledgehammer of our combined blame is a righteous, empowering and cleansing one. It reminds us of the nation that we don’t want to be anymore and the type of president we don’t want to have again. So stop the madness! The George Bush makeover deserves a flying shoe upside its noggin. True, ever adept at avoiding blunt realism, W. will duck like the dodge ball pro he is, and then set about spinning the incident as yet another example of the increased freedoms in our American democracy, but symbolically, he’ll have the bull’s eye shiner of all time.
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