Frank Rich. It Takes Potemkin Village. Must Read!!!

Frank Rich. It Takes Potemkin Village. Must. Read.
by Maccabee
Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 07:06:16 PM PDT

This week is a particularly snarky and inciteful filleting of the propaganda machine that is spewing smoke and lies and soon, as they say, the jig is up- nobody is buying this any more.

more at:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/10/21616/890

December 11, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
It Takes a Potemkin Village
By FRANK RICH
WHEN a government substitutes propaganda for governing, the Potemkin village is all. Since we don't get honest information from this White House, we must instead, as the Soviets once did, decode our rulers' fictions to discern what's really happening. What we're seeing now is the wheels coming off: As the administration's stagecraft becomes more baroque, its credibility tanks further both at home and abroad. The propaganda techniques may be echt Goebbels, but they increasingly come off as pure Ali G.

Mr. Bush's "Plan for Victory" speech was, of course, the usual unadulterated nonsense. Its overarching theme - "We will never accept anything less than complete victory" - was being contradicted even as he spoke by rampant reports of Pentagon plans for stepped-up troop withdrawals between next week's Iraqi elections and the more important (for endangered Republicans) American Election Day of 2006. The specifics were phony, too: Once again inflating the readiness of Iraqi troops, Mr. Bush claimed that the recent assault on Tal Afar "was primarily led by Iraqi security forces" - a fairy tale immediately unmasked by Michael Ware, a Time reporter embedded in that battle's front lines, as "completely wrong." No less an authority than the office of Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, promptly released a 59-page report documenting his own military's inadequate leadership, equipment and training.

But this variety of Bush balderdash is such old news that everyone except that ga-ga 25 percent instantaneously tunes it out. We routinely assume that the subtext (i.e., the omissions and deliberate factual errors) of his speeches and scripted town meetings will be more revealing than the texts themselves. What raised the "Plan for Victory" show to new heights of disinformation was the subsequent revelation that the administration's main stated motive for the address - the release of a 35-page document laying out a "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" - was as much a theatrical prop as the stunt turkey the president posed with during his one furtive visit to Baghdad two Thanksgivings ago.

As breathlessly heralded by Scott McClellan, this glossy brochure was "an unclassified version" of the strategy in place since the war's inception in "early 2003." But Scott Shane of The New York Times told another story. Through a few keystrokes, the electronic version of the document at whitehouse.gov could be manipulated to reveal text "usually hidden from public view." What turned up was the name of the document's originating author: Peter Feaver, a Duke political scientist who started advising the National Security Council only this June. Dr. Feaver is an expert on public opinion about war, not war itself. Thus we now know that what Mr. McClellan billed as a 2003 strategy for military victory is in fact a P.R. strategy in place for no more than six months. That solves the mystery of why Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey of the Army, who is in charge of training Iraqi troops, told reporters that he had never seen this "National Strategy" before its public release last month.

http://select.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/opinion/11rich.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

"...the release of a 35-page document laying out a "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" - was as much a theatrical prop as the stunt turkey the president posed with during his one furtive visit to Baghdad two Thanksgivings ago."

OUCH!

Sounds like a character from "WKRP."

The gang that couldn't bullshit straight.

1 entry found for Potemkin village.
Potemkin village
n.

Something that appears elaborate and impressive but in actual fact lacks substance: “the Potemkin village of this country's borrowed prosperity” (Lewis H. Lapham).

Fidelista today at Bellaciao described Our Leader's workings this way:

This was vividly demonstrated in one of the revolting scenes in recent American history: Bush's State of the Union address in January 2003, delivered to Congress and televised nationwide during the final frenzy of war-drum beating before the assault on Iraq.

Trumpeting his successes in the Terror War, Bush claimed that "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists" had been arrested worldwide - "and many others have met a different fate."

His face then took on the characteristic leer, the strange, sickly half-smile it acquires whenever he speaks of killing people: "Let's put it this way. They are no longer a problem."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/10/21616/890

If I recall, much was made of it here on DU. Lots of people noticed it -- and had visceral reactions. The mask was off for a moment for everyone -- who had the will to look -- to see what lies behind it. Skull & Bones & All.

There's probably some DU threads on this State of the Nation speech in the DU archives --- but I have not the ambition to go searching.

His "Fuck You!" moment to the entire notion of the rule of law. Because 9/11 changed everything.

was that they didn't have to hide their evil schemes anymore and could take over the world in broad daylight. :hi:

I posted about it at the time. It was sick, just incredibly sick and SHOCKING to hear come out of the mouth of the POTUS. He sounded more like a serial killer.

:shrug:

Downloadable from this blog

"Today I had one of those couple-times-a-year multimedia zen moments and it involved listening to Mark Moran read Frank Rich’s Sunday NYT column It Takes a Potemkin Village while trying to read the broadsheet in my hands.

Stricken by the sharp humor after one and a half paragraphs… i had to just sit back and listen — i was laughing too hard to even read."

http://everythingbetween.com/

"'We will never accept anything less than complete victory' - was being contradicted even as he spoke by rampant reports of Pentagon plans for stepped-up troop withdrawals between next week's Iraqi elections and the more important (for endangered Republicans) American Election Day of 2006."

"The more we learn about such sleaze in the propaganda war, the more we see it's failing for the same reason as the real war: incompetence. Much as the disastrous Bremer regime botched the occupation of Iraq with bad decisions made by its array of administration cronies and relatives (among them Ari Fleischer's brother), so the White House doesn't exactly get the biggest bang for the bucks it shells out to cronies for fake news."

Go, Frank Rich!



p.s. Ari Fleischer: :puke:

Fourth article down.

http://edstrong.blog-city.com/

For those of you not familiar, Ali G - is a brilliant British white entertainer that created a featherhead rapper black man persona - by speech and clothing only. He would get to interview inportant people such as the UN secretary, Newt Gingrich, Brent Scowcroft and get them to fall for his schtick. What was astounding in his act is that his pretense to be black is so brazen - he challenges his counterparts on racism sometimes ("Is it because I am black?")- that none dare to question his premise.
By being so preposterous, he was making his interviewers walk on eggshells around him - and W accomplishes that effect too.

I was totally lost when I read this sentence in Rich's column.

thanks for the help

b_b

an Oxford graduate with astounding capacity to act stupid and elicit patronozing attitudes. Ali G was his most popular one (had a movie too), but there was also the loveable antisemite from Kazakstan who was getting hoots of approval in the South and a famboyant bitchy queen interviewing hi fashion folk.

I agree that Rich's column is typically terrific. Problem is, he's not winning over many new converts to our noble cause for sanity. The moron son's numbers are actually rising!! In the face of countless exposes of incompetence, scandals galore, bold-face lies - even an illegal, mis-directed, self-destructive war - has not been enough to substantially change this country's opinion about this administration. WTF WILL IT TAKE!??
We faithfully read our usual suspect's columns and shake our hands in passive agreement. But the outrage continues.
Again, I find myself hoping against hope for more GJ indictments - something, something, anything to tip the damn scale once and for all.
It's not funny anymore. We're losing our freedom, our country. Maybe people like me really don't belong in the U.S. anymore, I don't know. What will it take?

Tyrants always fall. It may take a while. The struggle may get very tough, but keep in mind a major theme in Rich's essay: they are incompetent. It is, at this point, our biggest opening. They keep fucking everything up.

He writes brilliantly, and he's incisive and truthful.

In short, he doesn't belong in a modern American newspaper.

They hid him behind their new "pay-per-view" Times Select wall.

No American is better at what he does than Frank Rich. Their attacks involve the idea that he´s just a theater critic. He may have started out as just a theater critic, but he IS America´s greatest columnist.