Bush culture: The Crawford cowboy

U2 lead singer and international politico Bono has worked with U.S. President George W.

Bush on HIV/AIDS policy in Africa, but has said nothing about the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Photograph by : Ron Edmonds, Associated Press Files

Peter Birnie and Kevin Griffin, Vancouver Sun

Published: Saturday, January 20, 2007 PRESIDENT BUSH: I saw some of it.
PELLEY: . .

. execution?
BUSH: Yeah.

PELLEY: I'm curious. How did you see the video?
BUSH: Internet.

PELLEY: You called it up on the internet and watched it?
BUSH: Somebody showed me parts of it. Yeah.

I didn't wanna watch the whole thing.
Asking George W. Bush recently about the execution of Saddam Hussein, CBS reporter Scott Pelley tipped TV viewers to something significant about the U.

S. president.
He's just like the rest of us.

Someone on his staff had directed Bush to the Internet to watch Saddam hang. And just like most of us, he switched it off and went on to something else.
While some people may be loath to admit any similarity to the Crawford cowboy in the White House, if there is a single symbol of the cultural shift that's occurred in the Bush years, it's YouTube.

Here is the perfect convergence of new technology and growing narcissism, as so many video creations are uploaded each day to the wildly popular website that no one could possibly keep up with viewing them all. Andy Warhol's fabled 15 minutes of fame are now available to absolutely anyone, as the career of Paris Hilton so amply illustrates.
There is, of course, a post-9/11 price to pay for this.

While the Bush White House trumpets its renewed commitment to the arts, Nancy Spector, a Guggenheim curator and commissioner of the U.S. pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale, has little appreciation for such NEA programs as Operation Homecoming, which seeks to mute criticism of the Iraq war by funding the writings of returning troops, or such art shows as American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius.

"The U.S. government has been relentless in its assault on contemporary art," says Spector, "by privileging all things patriotic.

"
Another legacy of the Bush presidency is the militarization of the country's cultural landscape, a change which has affected everything from fashion (camouflage is in!) and car design (hello, Hummer!) to TV programs and websites.

The most prominent example is 24, the Fox TV show starring Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, a federal agent in the Counter Terrorist Unit in Los Angeles.
In the series' sixth season, blame immediately falls on Islamic militants for suicide bombs that kill more than 900 in cities across the U.S.

A nuclear bomb goes off in L.A. and one White House character justifies clamping down on civil rights by declaring, "Security has its price -- just get used to it.

"
In the U.S., 24 has been described as one of television's most political shows.

In some quarters it's taken seriously -- last year, the conservative Heritage Foundation hosted a panel called 24 and America's Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction or Does it Matter? Among its participants was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
But while there's been lots of discussion among critics over the political messages in 24, its influence may be vastly overrated.

The best 24 has ever done in the Nielsen ratings is 24th last year when it attracted just under 13 million viewers -- far fewer than the top-rated show American Idol at more than 36 million viewers.
What's more subtle are the ways the U.S.

military is embedding itself in popular culture.
Last year, for example, the U.S.

military started recruiting through www.myspace.com, a social networking website for young people.

The site has more than 100 million profiles and was purchased in 2005 by Fox News owner News Corporation.
Last February, the U.S.

marine corps created its own profile which opens with the tagline: "The few. The proud. The marines.

" The site contains a video clip of boot camp full of fast editing and young males saying "Yes Sir!" At the bottom of the page, the website says that the marine corps has 18,836 friends and shows personal photographs of several of them.
In September 2006 the line between entertainment and the military was blurred even further when the U.

S. air force launched a cross-promotional effort with the Fox series Prison Break. Visitors to the air force's MySpace profile could vote for their favourite of five air force commercials wih the winning ad running on the Sept.

18 episode of the drama. Although the air force shut down its MySpace profile briefly because of concerns over inappropriate content, the U.S.

army later launched its own MySpace profile when it assured the military that it was taking measures to protect the privacy of anyone under 18.
According to "The Militarization of MySpace," by Nick Turse in Z magazine -- a leftwing political magazine -- the U.S.

military is also sponsoring groups such as the Professional Bull Riders, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys' Association and NASCAR in an effort to reach its target market of 17- to 24-year-olds.
"The militarization of MySpace is just the latest Pentagon effort to occupy a new realm that will put the military product in front of ever more young eyes," Turse said in the article. "Increasingly desperate to recruit and retain bodies, the military continues to invade new media territory, from text-messaging to Pentagon podcasting.

"
Culturally, the Bush years have simply seen a continuation of something that started when the Internet and cellphones first took off about a decade ago -- the steady erosion of actual community between people in favour of a complex form of remote sensing. Interest in anything other than one's favourite music (on my iPod) or game (on my computer/TV console) or gossip (on my cellphone) or opinions (on my weblog) is waning daily; only our collective schadenfreude has us sharing delight in the suffering of all those losers on all those "reality" TV shows.
At the highbrow end of culture, it's a fact that the U.

S. does surprisingly well in funding the "posh" arts of opera, dance, theatre and so on. This seems especially incongruous given that the federal government does virtually nothing to help, other than allowing the National Endowment for the Arts to dole out "seed money," and state governments are always at the mercy of their tax base.

In 2002 and 2003, for example, California slashed its budget for the arts from $20 million to $2 million, while Florida's funding fell from $30 million to $6.7 million.
Political commentators in the U.

S. have made a big deal of the return of criticism of the Bush presidency in the past few years, led by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. But what's really happened is a return to normal after the aberration of 9/11.

Within hours of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, most Americans -- not to mention millions around around the world -- rallied to Bush. As a country perceived to be under attack, the U.S.

went on a war footing and no criticism, however mild, would be tolerated.
How bad was it five years ago? Satirist Bill Maher had his show Politically Incorrect cancelled on ABC for doing nothing more than challenging the idea that all terrorists were cowards.

There's no better illustration of the evolution of political dissent in the U.S. in recent years than the story of the Dixie Chicks.

On the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, group member Natalie Maines said in a concert in London, England, that she was "ashamed" that the president came from her home state of Texas. Her comments would probably have amounted to nothing except that they were included in a review by the British newspaper The Guardian.
The backlash from true believers in the U.

S. was immediate. While bands like U2, whose lead singer Bono worked closely with the Bush White House on HIV/AIDS policy in Africa, said nothing about the war, the Dixie Chicks were attacked by right-wing pundits across the country, removed from country and western playlists, had concerts cancelled and found themselves battling death threats.

But as the war in Iraq got worse for Bush, the climate got better for The Dixie Chicks, as the documentary Shut Up Sing by two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple so accurately reflected. The three Texan women kept touring, recording and speaking out. They achieved even greater fame in Canada and Europe and significantly rebuilt their support in the U.

S. with the release of a record that went gold.
The Dixie Chicks' comeback may have reached a kind of political peak here in Vancouver.

During their concert at GM Place on the day that U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned because of the war in Iraq, Maines told a cheering crowd that "finally there was something to celebrate in the United States.

"
George W. Bush has two years left to serve in what's already been labelled, since the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress in 2006, a lame-duck presidency. Yet he may not suffer much at the hands of the media.

At last year's White House Correspondents Association dinner, TV comedian Stephen Colbert stood at the dais and launched a subtly vicious attack on both Bush and a press corps accused of playing lap-dog to the Bushg administration. Colbert was widely criticized by many of his "colleagues" (remember that he's not a journalist but a comedian).
This year's dinner will instead feature the decidedly noncontroversial musings of relic Rich Little.

GEORGE W. BUSH
Public office: Former governor of Texas sworn in for his first term as 43rd President of the United States on Jan. 20, 2001; for his second term, Jan.

20, 2005; son of George H.W. Bush, U.

S. president from 1989 to 1993.
Vital statistics: Born July 6, 1946 in New Haven, Conn; grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas.

Education: BA in history from Yale where he was a C student and a member of the secretive Skull and Bones Society; MBA from Harvard Business School.
Major life events: Death of his sister Robin when he was seven and stopping drinking alcohol shortly after turning 40.
Cultural activities: Played Little League as a child, still knows the starting lineup of the 1954 New York Giants, and was a co-owner of the Texas Rangers Major League Baseball team; likes to read biographies and Robert Parker mysteries; reads the Bible regularly and says his Christian faith is an important part of his life; listened to Johnny Rodriguez at Harvard; no mention of any ongoing interest in music, performing or visual arts, or movies.

Politics: He's a Republican who describes himself as a "compassionate conservative" committed to turn around a "culture of dependency" in the U.S.
"During the more than half century of my life, we have seen an unprecedented decay in our American culture, a decay that has eroded the foundation of our collective values and moral standards of conduct," Bush says.

"We must reduce the reach and scope of the federal government, returning it to its proper, limited role, and push freedom and responsibility back to local governments, to neighbourhoods, and to individuals."
Sources: www.whitehouse.