Saturday, October 15, 2005
Fake Events, Real Stupidity
Bush's teleconference with soldiers in Iraq this week was even more phony than we thought. Despite the assertion that they were all combat soldiers, one of them was in fact a military flack. Now, military public relations officers are in about as much danger as people walking point, so I don't intend to demean that officer's service. But as cooked as the event was, it seems just that much more extreme to cook it to the point of including one person who would know exactly what to say and how to say it, as a last line of defense against going off the administration's script.
Disgusting. Not surprising, but disgusting.
And speaking of phony events, it appears that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was instrumental in getting the recent terror threat publicized and in raising the alert level, even though the evidence for the threat itself was pretty thin. He's in a tough reelection fight, so why not do what has worked so well for the Bush Administration? Orcinus analyzes the long-term damage of hoaxing for short-term advantage.
Bush's teleconference with soldiers in Iraq this week was even more phony than we thought. Despite the assertion that they were all combat soldiers, one of them was in fact a military flack. Now, military public relations officers are in about as much danger as people walking point, so I don't intend to demean that officer's service. But as cooked as the event was, it seems just that much more extreme to cook it to the point of including one person who would know exactly what to say and how to say it, as a last line of defense against going off the administration's script.
Disgusting. Not surprising, but disgusting.
And speaking of phony events, it appears that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was instrumental in getting the recent terror threat publicized and in raising the alert level, even though the evidence for the threat itself was pretty thin. He's in a tough reelection fight, so why not do what has worked so well for the Bush Administration? Orcinus analyzes the long-term damage of hoaxing for short-term advantage.
