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SPIN CYCLE
Like a lot of brand-name journalists, Frank Rich attracts his
share of awe and loathing. Being a "cultural” critic for The New
York Times, after all, is enough for an entire demographic to dis
like you, if not dismiss you, on partisan principle. The fact that
this venerated pundit moved
to his coveted Op Ed page
spot from the theater section
probably won't help him push
copies in Provo either.
But the perspective of a
drama critic is germane to
The Greatest Story Ever Sold:
The Decline and Fall of Truth
From 9/11 to Katrina (The
Penguin Press, New York,
2006) a book that reads like
an ubei blog entry, but not
necessarily in a bad way.
Where many anti-Bush books
devote themselves to tire
lessly chronicling canards, or
tackling the Bush administra
tion from a historical per
spective. Rich keeps his focus
on stagecraft: specifically, the administration's spin and stunts
done in the name of winning the battle for public opinion.
The formula here is bloglike indeed: quote a New York Times or
Washington Post story and dispense with the commentary. You can
practically see the hyperlinks. The analysis however, is relentless,
original and well argued. It boils down to this: the Bush admin
istration has done an unprecedented job in manipulating a wide
spectrum of media to sell the Iraq war to the American public.
In a cross between a Hollywood publicity campaign and ac
tion film. Rich chronicles it all: the release of politically useful
and patently false news narratives (paging PFC Lynch); the bribing
of news commentators (Armstrong Williams); the perpetuation of
fake reporters (Jeff Gannon, anyone?); Bush's Top Gun scene on a
sunset-silhouetted aircraft carrier. All of this is contextualized and
debunked.
What's refreshing about Rich is that however liberal his politics
might be. he doesn't carry water for the opposition party, which he
sees as almost incurably ineffectual when it comes to creating its
own counter-narrative. The Greatest Story is also packed with some
excellent meta analysis of
...if you can make it th? popular culture within
the larger framework of
selling the war.
Take Rich's contention
that the deification of the
“greatest generation “—a
brand unto itself—is played
out in the war debate. Rich
suggests that boomer gen
eration pundits hoped to be
part of their own greatest
generation “even if it was other people's children who had to do
the fighting. Their contempt for the war's critics often seems so
defensive in retrospect that it's hard not to wonder if the over
heated rhetoric was a reflection of their own deep-seated, unmen
tioned doubts about the Iraq project.”
It's tempting and somewhat understandable to lump all of
this in with the growing genre of Bush-bashing literature. And at
times. The Greatest Story reads more like a malfeasance catalogue
than a sustained narrative. But there's something larger at play in
Rich's argument on how fear and manipulation—and the manipula
tion of fear—can turn a free press into a conduit for an adminis
tration whose selling pitch, we continue to learn, was miles rosier
than the delivered product.
Of course, for all of Rich's spin debunking, he raises ques
tions that probably require another book to answer. In an age of
partisan news—Fox and Ann Coulter for some, Air America and Al
Frartken for others—coupled with a metastasizing blogosphere, is
public perception easier or harder to tweak? Would the tactics of
Karl Rove and Co. work as well now, when bloggers—from left and
right—are able to check a news story faster than George Allen can
say macaca? Or would the tactics simply adapt and become even
more underhanded?
If nothing else, Rich offers a great primer for those who maybe
haven't paid as much attention to the news as they would've liked
these last few years. For political junkies, expect to sift through
stories you've already followed. In either case, if you can make it
through these pages without becoming enraged, you're either bi
partisan to the point of nirvana or taking too many sedatives.
through these pages
without becoming enraged,
you're either bipartisan
to the point of nirvana or
taking too many sedatives.
John Dicker
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