PHONEYS

2005-09-19

[This is a great article in Mother Jones](http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/09/the_presidency_shines.html) on the one thing the Bush Administration does very, very, well: **show business**.> It may be true that, for a week or more, this administration couldn't get a bottle of water to a diabetic grandmother, but when something was actually at stake -- what reporters far and wide referred to as the "[rebuilding](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/15/AR2005091502552_pf.html)" not of New Orleans but of a presidency, or simply of the presidential "[image](http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-assess16sep16,0,1051266.story?coll=la-home-headlines)" -- efficiency, coordination, and togetherness were the by-words of the day.They do public relations and staged events better than anybody. P.R. is built into their DNA it seems. They just appointed a PR flack to go to Arab countries and try to bolster our image. And they think this is a perfectly valid and normal thing to do. They are "Always On Message" (to steal a phrase from [Larry Young](http://www.ait-planetlar.com)) no matter how inhuman, how idiotic, or how just blatantly offensive it might be. Even if you're a die-hard Bush fan, come on, this is insane.

tags: grommes, bush, politics


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