Adventures in the Memory Hole: George W. Bush Pre and Post-9/11

by Brian Howard

Ever laugh at Will Ferrell's impersonation of George W. on SNL? Forwarded one of Jacob Weinstein's "Bushisms" from Slate to a friend? Then you're playing right into Dubya's hands, claims Mark Crispin Miller, media critic and NYU professor who penned the best-selling The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder (Norton) in June 2001.

Essentially, goes the argument, W.'s dumb act masks a sort of serial partisan vindictiveness that's been passed down through the Bush/Nixon political family tree -- see the Bush camp's handling of the Jim Jeffords defection. According to Miller -- who obviously logged a lot of TV time in preparing his dissection of King George's public presentation as the lovable, self-effacing dolt, and the media's swallowing of it whole -- Bush (not to mention his handlers) is far more shrewd than he's given credit for, and it's what makes him so dangerous.

Getting press for a book critical of the president and the supposedly liberal media's kowtowing to him was a difficult proposition before the 11th of September, 2001. Figuring things weren't gonna get any easier in a post-attack world, Miller, who comes to speak at the Annenberg School this week, tackles the issue head-on in the preface to Dyslexicon's new paperback edition. "[I]t had long been his good fortune not to be compared with betters, but only to himself... Because he'd started out so uninspiring -- looking so freaked, depending on his cue cards, promising to nab the guilty Œfolks' -- he came across like Superman just by delivering his lines without a glitch," writes Miller, summing up Bush as perhaps the greatest beneficiary of "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

Miller will speak this week, hosted by local media watchdogs Media Tank, Annenberg School and Civic House.

“Adventures in the Memory Hole: George W. Bush Pre and Post-9/11,” Thu., Sept. 19, 4 p.m., Annenberg School for Communication, 36th and Walnut sts., www.mediatank.org.