Norman Solomon

The News Media Are Knocking Bush -- and Propping Him Up

This month we've heard a lot of talk about journalists who got tough with President Bush. And it's true that he has been on the receiving end of some fiercely negative media coverage in the wake of the hurricane. But the mainstream U.S. press is ill-suited to challenging the legitimacy of the Bush administration.

The country's largest media institutions operate on a basis of enormous respect for presidential power. Major news organizations defer to that power even while venting criticisms. Overall, mass media outlets restrain the momentum of denunciations lest they appear to create instability for the Republic.

Initially, when the lethal character of Bush's "leadership" became clear in New Orleans, the journalistic focus on federal accountability was quick to bypass the president. For several days, the national political story seemed to mostly revolve around the flak-catching FEMA director, Michael Brown, a cipher who obviously was going to be tossed overboard by the administration...

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9/11 and Manipulation of the USA

Traveling from New York City in late September 2001, on a pre-scheduled book tour, author Joan Didion spoke with audiences in several cities on the West Coast. In the wake of 9/11, she later wrote, "these people to whom I was listening -- in San Francisco and Los Angeles and Portland and Seattle -- were making connections I had not yet in my numbed condition thought to make: connections between [the American] political process and what had happened on September 11, connections between our political life and the shape our reaction would take and was in fact already taking. These people recognized that even then, within days after the planes hit, there was a good deal of opportunistic ground being seized under cover of the clearly urgent need for increased security. These people recognized even then, with flames still visible in lower Manhattan, that the words 'bipartisanship' and 'national unity' had come to mean acquiescence to the administration's preexisting agenda..."

A lot of media coverage was glorifying people who died and/or showed courage on September 11, 2001. "In fact," Didion contended, "it was in the reflexive repetition of the word 'hero' that we began to hear what would become in the year that followed an entrenched preference for ignoring the meaning of the event in favor of an impenetrably flattening celebration of its victims, and a troublingly belligerent idealization of historical ignorance."

To observe the political manipulation of 9/11 after the towers collapsed was to witness a multidimensional power grab exercised largely via mass media...

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Clash of Representations: "Bush the Protector" vs. "Bush the Menace"

For President Bush, a classic political question -- "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" -- must be answered with a resounding "No."
In 2001, within days of 9/11, mass media touted Bush as a walking FDR and hailed him as the nation's visionary leader. The president settled into a jerky rhetorical rhythm that had the Washington press corps tapping its feet.

With major assistance from the news media, Bush struck a pose as the country's protector-in-chief. That was his story, and he was sticking to it.

But now, in the wake of the hurricane, Bush is widely seen as the nation's menace-in-chief...

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Firing Michael Brown Is Not Enough. How About Bush and Cheney?

Calls for firing Michael Brown are understandable. Aptly described as "the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA" by columnist Maureen Dowd a few days ago, he's an easy and appropriate target.

President Bush met with Brown last Friday and publicly told him: "You're doing a heck of a job."

In the grisly wake of the hurricane, Brown's job performance cannot be separated from Bush's job performance. To similar deadly effect, the president has brought to bear on people in New Orleans the same qualities that he has inflicted on people in Iraq -- refusal to acknowledge basic realities, lethally misplaced priorities, lack of compassion (cue the guitar), and overarching arrogance...

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Ending the Impunity of the Bush White House

The man in the Oval Office is fond of condemning "killers." But his administration continues to kill with impunity.

"They can go into Iraq and do this and do that," Martha Madden, former secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, said Thursday, "but they can't drop some food on Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now? It's just mind-boggling."

The policies are matters of priorities. And the priorities of the Bush White House are clear. For killing in Iraq, they spare no expense. For protecting and sustaining life, the cupboards go bare.

The problem is not incompetence. It's inhumanity, cruelty and greed...

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