Why Bushisms Matter Part 2

This is from a book called "Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You." The book was excerpted at Salon, and this is a good quote that goes back to how Bushisms distinguish between President Bush and Senator Kerry (and the inherent phoniness in the distinction).

"The conservative media apparatus is an integrated system in which stories circulate between talk radio, conservative magazines and newspapers and the Fox News Channel, generating momentum and pushing their way into more mainstream news outlets. The most enthusiastic goal of this media machine is locating and publicizing foolish things said by liberals, no matter how obscure or inconsequential the speaker may be, to inspire mainstream contempt for liberals. The idea that the words of some random professor or student are more important than the actions of the country's leaders may be farcical, but by giving endless attention to these alleged outrages, conservatives sustain the image of liberals as powerful and elitist and conservatives as persecuted and victimized. Were they so inclined, liberals could no doubt find conservative citizens who say stupid things too. But no one is paying them to undertake the search.

When ordinary people, told endlessly to be suspicious if not contemptuous of those with too much education, hear people snicker at George W. Bush's inability to put together a grammatical sentence, they sympathize. Far from being damaging, jokes about the president's intelligence and ineloquence serve to distract from his status within the aristocracy, providing evidence that Bush is not one of the elite, indeed is scorned by them. Presidential elections are won and lost over a variety of factors, but which candidate seems the smartest is not one of them. When liberals make jokes about the bizarre tangle of words that sometimes emerges from Bush's mouth, he is only too pleased since it serves the end of separating him from the elite."

Incidently, in spell checking this, the spell checker didn't like the word Bushisms. The suggested replacement word; "Bushwhaking." That's not very signicant, but it is, in some small way, gratifying.