It is hard to escape a pervasive and growing sense that celebrities are
becoming involved in politics. Perhaps this has always been so, and
there is nothing new under the sun. It may well be, however, that
the phenomenon has increased in recent years and, further, that this
trend signals a profound sea-change in American political communications.
Pursuing this hypothesis, we argue here that in an age of escalating
global resource war and in the face of an omnipresent corporate entertainment
industry, we are now witnessing a subtle, intentional and seemingly
permanent transition to the politics of distraction. Celebrities
become politicians, and politicians aspire to become celebrities as
voters are relegated to the role of fans. All the while, power is
ever more concentrated in the hands of a few who stage manage pseudo-events
from behind the scenes.
Without independent access to information
about what occurs behind the scenes, the public is ever more marginalized
and diverted from effective engagement as citizens. In the most powerful
democracy on Earth, with non-stop media coverage of political celebrities,
national politics have become a sideshow where clowns and buffoons
strut and bellow across a movable stage to divert the public’s attention
from what is really shaping their lives and determining the future
fate of the planet. This shift to a permanent politics of distraction
deserves deliberate scrutiny if we hope to move beyond it and restore
meaning to the practice of democracy in twenty-first century American.
The gravity
of the problem at hand and the thoroughness of the transformation
of American political communication can be grasped by considering
the problem of climate change. There is a striking contrast between
how this problem is characterized in America and how it is viewed throughout the
rest of world. The difference in these perceptions emanates primarily
from a systematic devotion of the Bush Administration to the politics
of distraction.
In February
of this year in London, The Independent published a widely
read article by commentator Geoffrey Lean on the global human condition.
Alluding to the famous cinema drama which serves as a backdrop to
understanding our situation, he entitled the article, “Apocalypse
now: how mankind is sleepwalking to the end of the Earth.” [1] In his column Lean emphasized that the global
crisis had become dramatically apparent to world leaders by early
2005, but as yet the human community is not responding with effective
policies to the warnings of the world’s top scientists. Evoking a
trans-historical perspective and looking back at the present from
the future he lamented:
Future historians, looking back from a much hotter and
less hospitable world, are likely to play special attention to the
first few weeks of 2005. As they puzzle over how a whole generation
could have sleepwalked into disaster - destroying the climate that
has allowed human civilisation to flourish over the past 11,000
years - they may well identify the past weeks as the time when the
last alarms sounded.
Last week, 200 of the world's
leading climate scientists - meeting at Tony Blair's request at
the Met Office's new headquarters at Exeter - issued the most urgent
warning to date that dangerous climate change is taking place,
and that time is running out.
Next week the Kyoto Protocol,
the international treaty that tries to control global warming, comes
into force after a seven-year delay. But it is clear that the protocol
does not go nearly far enough.
Partially
because the current administration opposed it, partially because the
American press was ignorant of its significance the Kyoto Protocol
passed into effect on February 16, 2005 without much public commentary
in America. Few Americans understood its importance
or how it is now widely understood to be only a first step in a far
greater transformation that humanity will have to undertake in order
to survive.
British commentators were not alone
in portraying the gravity of the issues at stake. In her conclusion
to a three-part series on climate change that appeared in The New
Yorker during April and May 2005, author Elizabeth Kolbert underscored
our dire dilemma in a similarly apocalyptic tone. “It may seem impossible
to imagine,” she wrote, “that a technologically advanced society could
choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now
in the process of doing.” [2]
As foreboding as their statements may
sound to the public, however, neither of these journalists writing
for the popular media in 2005 was saying anything fundamentally new.
Instead they were simply drawing attention to the weight of the scientific
understanding of our current circumstance. All of this has been widely
known among scientists for decades. Thirteen years ago in 1992, for
example, the late Nobel physicist, Henry Kendall organized a group
of over 100 Nobel Laureates to sign a major document called, the “World
Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,” which began with an opening
paragraph that stated baldly:
[3]
Human beings and the natural world are
on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often
irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources.
If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk
the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal
kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable
to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes
are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will
bring about.
What,
then, can account for this massive and potentially tragic public ignorance
about global climate and environmental change? Where is political
leadership in America on such momentous issues? In a country
saturated with 24-7, non-stop reporting of something that is called
“news,” and with competing parties fiercely contesting elections for
local and national office on a regular basis how could both the American
public and the leaders clambering for public attention have so thoroughly
missed the significance of such colossal phenomena? In short, why
are Americans – in the words of the British commentator -- “sleepwalking
to the end of the Earth?”
The answer to this troubling question
is not trivial. Reasons for this systemic ignorance need to be sought
in the profound transformation of American public discourse and evolution
of political communications in the past several decades. Yes, Americans
are bewildered, mystified and confused, but the reasons for this are
neither bewildering, nor mystifying, nor confusing. In fact, they
are quite simple.
Briefly put: the American public has
been led astray by “the politics of distraction.” As scholars have
pointed out, the politics of distraction work essentially by “...shifting
the public’s attention from the essential to the superficial….” [4] If public attention can be diverted systematically
in this manner the politics of distraction can emerge as the dominant
form of political behavior in any culture. “Advanced” or “mature”
democracies with highly developed communications systems are not immune
to this prospect. On the contrary, they may be more vulnerable to
this kind of shift than the nascent or newly emergent democracies
where citizens have struggled to exercise the privilege to vote and
are not about to “sleepwalk” anywhere. Their eyes are wide open.
They have been governed for too long by phonies and charlatans to
be easily fooled by politicians playacting as celebrities.
By contrast,
in America, the
politics of distraction have triumphed in recent years through the
wide-scale acceptance of national politics as a form of entertainment.
This acceptance has resulted from the simultaneous convergence of
at least five distinct -- but closely related and self-reinforcing
-- transformations in our culture. These transformations can be enumerated
plainly. They include:
1) the accentuated concentration of ownership in the
media industries with the ever more desperate competition to increase
market share of the readership or viewership to sell “eyeballs”
to corporate advertisers;
2) the rapid merging of news and entertainment businesses
with the Hollywoodization” of news content, the dumbing down of
public affairs programming, the trivialization of investigative
journalism and the ascendancy of “reality TV”;
3) the well-financed and pervasive expansion of hate-radio
and shout-television;
4) the growth of cable TV, e-mail news groups, the blogosphere,
web streaming and podcasting -- in short, narrow-casting -- and
the consequent decline in the dominance of broadcasting;
and
5) the steady growth of celebrity politics whereby celebrities
become politicians and political figures seek enduring recognition
as celebrities.
Each of these cultural transformations
deserves extended examination in its own right, but it is important
to emphasize that all of these trends exist by virtue of each other.
Collectively they serve to amplify and enhance one another.
For the purpose of this discussion we
will center our attention on the last of these convergent transformations.
We will focus upon the role of celebrity politics and the manner in
which this phenomenon has consolidated the politics of distraction
in a repetitive “theater of the absurd.” As foreign commentators
have repeatedly observed, President Bush appears on one stage after
another to repeat stock phrases with no relation to reality. The
remarkable fact is that the public has come to expect this kind of
performance from their President. In fact, we have come to accept
it without much comment because this is what we have been conditioned
to expect from celebrities. This acceptance marks the triumph of
the politics of distraction in America – something which may soon have disastrous
consequences both for this country and the wider world.
It is useful to outline the larger context
in which this process has come to pass. Every four years the American
public is expected to render its collective judgment on the question
of who its political leaders should be. Millions – perhaps billions
-- of dollars are spent over the four year electoral cycle to influence
that choice, so, among other things, it can be argued that the “free”
elections in America are among the most expensive the world
has ever witnessed.
With so much money changing hands it
is perhaps understandable that in the circle of political pundits
a great deal of attention has been focused upon campaign finance,
special-interest contributions, Political Action Committees (PACs)
and straight-forward accusations of corruption in purchasing votes
or rigging the voting process. There is, after all, a considerable
amount of paper to trace in this regard. Campaign laws make some
kind of disclosure inevitable. Thus, the obvious connections become
apparent relatively soon. Yet armies of clever lawyers are constantly
employed to figure out means to skirt or circumvent the laws, so many
months, perhaps years, are needed to unearth a more complete understanding
of who really paid for the electoral process. Small wonder, then,
that what passes for political commentary in the American media can
easily become sidetracked from matters of substance. Like bloodhounds
in pursuit of a red herring, American political commentators howl
loudly when they sniff impropriety, and they think their job is done
when they run to ground some hidden contributor or some elected official
on the take.
All of this is useful and important
in its own right, but it may be prove to be beside the point. In
their dogged pursuit of smelly political crooks, our country’s political
watchdogs may have missed the far more subtle and pervasive form of
corruption right underneath their noses. Indeed, for all of us, this
kind of corruption is easy to miss precisely because it is as plain
as the noses on our faces.
It is not only the blatant corruption
of individual political figures that requires scrutiny but rather
the more subtle, systemic corruption of the American political process
that should command our attention. One major form of that corruption
can be seen in the growing presence and ascendant influence of celebrities
in American politics. As it has evolved over time the celebrity-political
system is reciprocal: celebrities are stepping in to the role of politicians
and politicians are being packaged and presented increasingly as celebrities.
As one recent study has summarized the situation: [5]
…the American political system has changed into a celebrity
regime where politicians are subjected to Hollywood-style tabloid
coverage and celebrities are treated as political actors. It is
all part of the entertaining of America. No longer does the argument of whether pop culture influence
political change or vice versa matter. Politics is pop culture.
It is worth reviewing the ways in which
this came to pass. Initially, celebrities appeared as “sidekicks”
to those in power. Often they would appear at political rallies to
boost voter interest and financial support for aspiring candidates.
Increasingly, however, these sidekicks came to function in a strangely
different manner. Some celebrities from the realm of entertainment
began to take on explicitly political roles. It was as though once
they had learned to “act” some of the entertainers began to act politically,
taking on the added role in their repertoires of the “elected official.”
People like Ronald Reagan and Clint Eastwood or, more recently, Jesse
Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger seem to have stepped into political
careers as if government office required nothing more than mobilizing
the “fans” at election time.
The electoral
platform articulated by these actor/candidates was remarkably thin
or patently vacuous, yet this did not seem to bother the voters.
The reason for this was that by the time any of these figures ran
for office the corruption of the American political process was so
thorough that it was invisible to most Americans.
It is important to emphasize that the
issue of corruption lies not in the venal or wicked character of any
of those who ran for office. Although some might dispute this blanket
assertion, we can accept for the moment that all their characters
and motives were as pure as the driven snow. For our analysis of
the function of celebrity and the emergence of the politics of distraction,
this is not particularly important. The essential point is that the
source of fundamental corruption is grounded not so much in individual
figures but instead within the system itself. The problem is that
these candidates ran for political office not on any fully conceived
or well articulated platform but rather simply as celebrities.
This is both the source and the manifestation of the systemic corruption
of American politics. After all, what are celebrities? And what
do they have to do with politics?
As the noted historian, Daniel Boorstin,
observed over forty years ago, “The celebrity is a person who is well
known for his well-knowness.” [6] The tautology underscores the essence of the
phenomena. There need be no content whatsoever to celebrity. Indeed,
there usually is none. Celebrity is a highly crafted but essentially
manufactured product, emanating from what one observer has dubbed
the “celebrity-industrial process,” [7] but there need be no substance at its core.
In the case of entertainment-celebrities-turned-politicians, celebrity
candidates sought electoral support principally on the basis of identities
crafted for them as actors assuming the roles of fictitious characters.
It is as if in their rapturous adulation the fans have become subject
to some mysterious spell. While they were all potentially engaged
citizens, in their bewitched frame of mind fans vote not so much for
political leadership but rather for celebrity itself – the “image”
of a leader. In such an enchanted state, as Boorstin foresaw in
1961, “vivid image came to overshadow pale reality.” [8]
By the 1980s no serious critique of
the fact that celebrities were presenting themselves as politicians
could be sustained for long because most citizens had come to accept
that politics had become a form of entertainment – a fantasy world
in which an array of picture-perfect bodies and painted faces were
expected to repeat phrases crafted by nameless, behind-the-scenes,
scriptwriters expressly for a sequence of stage-managed “pseudo-events,”
consisting largely of one photo-op after another. [9] Politics had become play-acting. As Boorstin
noted in his book published shortly after the televised Kennedy-Nixon
debates, “in the last half
century a larger and larger portion of our experience, of what we
read and see and hear, has come to consist of pseudo-events. We expect
more of them and we are given more of them. They flood our consciousness.” [10]
This corruption
occurred gradually – in fact, so gradually that it is perhaps impossible
to point to a time “before” it all went wrong. Any choice of a point
in the past when things “used to be” such-and-such and “ever since”
they have gone south is necessarily arbitrary. Pseudo-events with
pseudo-leadership are all we have come to expect in America. After all, by the time the movie
star, Ronald Reagan, ran for President in 1980, he had already been
elected as the governor of the state in which Hollywood and Disneyland were considered major
“cultural” assets. In 1980 few commentators found Reagan’s political
candidacy as a B-movie star outrageous or even odd.
In reality, the corruption of the American
political process is co-extensive with the evolution of political
communications itself. [11] Whenever new means of political communication
are exploited, the opportunity for corrupting the political process
has presented itself. Those who historically have benefited from
the new means of political communication have, quite naturally, portrayed
it as an extension of democracy’s essential character. Those who
have been victimized by these new means of political communication
often cry foul and wail about the decline and fall of practically
everything.
How, then, are we to make sense of this?
What kinds of transformations in political communication are genuinely
innovative and serve to invigorate the democratic process? Which function,
on the contrary, to weaken it? deaden it? or kill it altogether?
Is there any means to decide which is which? Doesn’t this depend
upon what we mean by “democracy?” Ah, yes; perhaps this is the nub
of the problem. What has democracy become in an age of ubiquitous
entertainment? When TV shows are regularly “voted” upon and political
leaders seek anxiously to be interviewed on MTV, the Larry King Show
or late-night talk TV, what is the difference between political communication
and entertainment? If there is no difference, what has become of
democracy in the “celebrity-industrial complex” that envelopes us
all? Can citizens any longer hope to become more than fans? If so,
how?
These
questions are admittedly large – too grand, in fact, to be answered
in a satisfactory or systematic manner here. Nevertheless, we can
gain some insight about both the emerging forms of celebrity politics
and their significance in consolidating the politics of distraction
by examining in detail how the administration has sought to spin the
global climate issue. Through these maneuvers we can see how a core
group of advisors and strategists have orchestrated a non-existent
debate over several years, creating for the President a celebrity
persona and a role to act out in stage-managed pseudo events in which
he would claim to promote “sound science” for “effective policy.
He could then appear to be doing something by calling for further
“research,” all the while side-stepping any meaningful action to curb
fossil fuel consumption. In the process the public is alternately
amused and confused, while Bush’s core supporters from the oil, coal
and extractive industries reap record profits, secure unparalleled,
non-competitive military contracts and acquire unprecedented access
to federal lands for future resource prospecting and extraction at
public expense.
All of
this is accomplished with no effective public opposition because it
happened off stage. Were glaring floodlights to shine on these corporate
rip-offs, the public would be scandalized. Similarly, if Americans
were to perceive clearly the costly and potentially disastrous shifts
in climate that are likely to result from the carbon intensive policies
pursued by the Bush administration and its fossil fuel supporters,
there would be public outrage. Citizens would demand that their government
focus its efforts and their tax dollars on working cooperatively with
the rest of the world’s governments to engineer a safe and stable
transition to a post-carbon fueled world. But, as it is, the politics
of distraction has succeeded in keeping people’s attention away from
these sobering realities, diverting them instead to the side show
that the national political arena has become.
The only reason this theater
of the absurd can continue is because the press and the public have
resigned themselves to accepting politics as the equivalent of theater
and George Bush himself as a strange new kind of celebrity hero –
the “Happy Hick.”. Bush and his handlers have created and cultivated
this stage persona to assure the repeated success of the ongoing politics
of distraction.
Crafting this role for Bush
was an obvious choice for Karl Rove and Karen Hughes. After all,
Bush himself regarded Ronald Reagan as his mentor and “hero.” The
extension was logical. Thus, we have a President embracing the image
of a B-movie actor, seeking to model himself upon a celluloid cowboy
whose publicity machine had contrived to dub, “the Great Communicator.”
One generation removed what we get in GW is a species of pseudo-cowboy
who retreats frequently to a “ranch” in Texas but does not even ride
a horse. Born in Connecticut, schooled at Andover and Yale, GW distinguished
himself only as a cheerleader, a National Guardsmen with a questionable
record, a failed business man, and the owner of a mediocre baseball
franchise.
This is not normally the
stuff of national leadership. But the facts did not seem to matter
any more in the eyes of a confused and hypnotized public. By evoking
Reagan’s celluloid ghost the movie-going public knew that it was expected
to “suspend its disbelief” in watching the Bush act. After it was
rehearsed at length in Texas, the Bush handlers felt that the “Ahh-Shucks”
cowboy image was ready for the nation campaign stage. With considerable
help from the promotional wizards of Madison Avenue, the image of
the Happy Hick -- an inarticulate but good natured, grinning cowboy
-- was implanted firmly in the public mind. The image is as phony
as a three dollar bill, but, as a genuine phony, GW matches the part.
We all know he is not a cowboy. But we also do not want to confront
the possibility that he may, in fact, be as dumb as he sounds, looks
and acts. So we settle for the notion that he is play-acting the
role of the Happy Hick. We would prefer to accept this mythical persona
rather confront the notion that it may be a reality.
For lack of any other qualities,
this is the fictional image that GW and his handlers have adopted,
perfected and consistently presented for the scripted screen play
of public appearances. With his rehearsed Texas drawl nobody believes
he actually is the cowboy as he is trying to act, but no one cares
because they have accepted the corny role as a simulacrum for leadership
in a script they find distracting or even amusing. Perhaps the movie-going
public accepts it as a vague and wistful reminiscence of the simpler
Reagan, B-movie era. All GW has to do is to step into this role and
“to stay on message” with whatever script has been placed before him
by his handlers for any chosen day.
Oddly
enough even when he fails to stay on message or strays dangerously
into constructing a response to a question in his own words, none
of the ensuing mistakes seem to have a lasting negative impact. In
fact, the frequently observed and oft-reported verbal gaffs – if not
actually staged – have turned out to be highly beneficial in reinforcing
the hick cowboy image. Everyone laughs. Capturing and publishing
collected “Bushisms” has become a modest industry in its own right,
and this, too, serves to build the Happy Hick celebrity role. Only
a few people are embarrassed. The reason why the numbers of the embarrassed
are not greater than they are is that as “fans” we Americans have
come to the staged political events already prepared to suspend our
disbelief as we do customarily in watching movies or going to the
theater. We have come to accept – perhaps even welcome – whatever
distraction we can glean from what, on some deeper level, we all know
to be growing ridicule in the world at large and a vague sense of
impending doom.
By appearing again and again
in the Happy Hick celebrity role that his handlers have created for
him, Bush and his team have effectively reduced national politics
to a side-show. Nobody expects anything of substance from the President
any more, and sure enough they do not get it. He prevails in encounters
with adversaries by winning what might be called a contest of “lowered
expectations.” Whatever the occasion, no matter how badly Bush handles
the scene the audience compensates for his evident inadequacies with
a series of excuses or remarks like “…well it was better than it might
have been…” or “…you think this is bad? You should have seen the
time when….” Audiences accustomed to theatre performances generally
want on stage actors to succeed because they don’t want the scene
itself to fail or the entire play to be called a flop. The audience
in this sense co-conspires with the poor actor, compensating for an
amateurish performance or blatant incompetence by suggesting that
the play itself was nevertheless credible or that it had some redeeming
moments. In addition, the televised political pundits who immediately
succeed any televised Presidential statement with “discussion” among
“experts” or seeming endless commentary strive to add further compensatory
layers of meaning, lest the public remain troubled by the partial
aspect of the President’s performance or the illogic of his statements.
Reactions to the politician/celebrity
role may, to some extent, be limited to a particular generation.
As David Mindich has observed, those under 40 years old have for the
most part ceased to follow the news altogether. [12]
Thus, during the Bush years the younger generation is
not really disillusioned with politics because they are too sophisticated
to have had illusions in the first place. Among those who still do
follow current events, their approach is decidedly more ironic towards
the political celebrities they see parading before them, and this
becomes apparent in how they choose to acquire their news. Many teenagers
and young adults – perhaps, in fact, the majority – prefer to receive
their news of national politics from The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart on Comedy Central. They have long since given up hope
of expecting truth from mainstream media (MSM news), so they have
settled for the Comedy Central side show. At least it is more
amusing. [13] We could perhaps all laugh if the
results were not so tragic and devastating in the world at large.
Well
staged distraction is, of course, precisely what best serves the interests
of the petrochemical, resource extraction, manufacturing and logistic
support industries that brought Bush to power. Putting GW on a movable
stage, making celebrity-like “appearances” as the Happy Hick across
the country serves the purpose of keeping the sideshow going. Meanwhile,
the Gang of Four – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove and Rice – continue to make
all significant policy decisions behind the scenes with timid or non-existent
press coverage and little public scrutiny of any kind.
For
example, the American public has never seen the detailed papers of
Vice-President Cheney’s energy task force -- the group that helped
formulate the administration's energy policy. Many argue that the
public has a right to know whose interests were listened to most closely
as the administration drew up its energy plan. After all, this team
of experts was paid for by taxpayers money. Shouldn’t the public
have a right to know what were its proceedings and conclusions? The
secrecy surrounding these documents fuels the persistent question:
“what are Cheney and the energy lobby trying to hide?”
In the absence of full disclosure
partial evidence and speculation are all that is available. It is
perhaps for this reason that extended and detailed investigations
are now beginning to suggest that the entire series of events surrounding
9-11 were part of a highly secret, coordinated, and stage-managed
drama designed to keep the public scared and ignorant while at the
same time whipping up public hatred against Arabs and Muslims to a
fever pitch in a demand for “revenge.”
After 9-11 the Bush administration
packaged its foreign policy message as a global “anti-terrorist,”
pro-democracy campaign. As more information is leaking out, however,
on what intelligence was available before the tragedy of September
11th, numerous analysts are pointing out that the Bush
administration was discussing plans for an invasion of Iraq well
before the tragic attacks of 9-11. From this perspective the
9-11 event sequence appears to have been orchestrated as an elaborate
part of the politics of distraction. These observations suggest that
from the outset the over arching intention of the Bush administration
was to extend and consolidate American control over Middle Eastern
and Caspian oil reserves. [14] Whether the attacks of 9-11 were
part of the orchestrated event sequence or whether the stage-managing
began only after the 9-11 attacks is – in one sense – not centrally
important to understanding how the politics of distraction has come
to function in America. The public pronouncements
about the meaning of these events and the motivation this reputed
meaning supplied for official action constituted the real significance
of this tragedy as a case study in the politics of distraction. According
to some observers the manipulation of public sentiment after the attacks
amounted to “Hijacking Catastrophe” – a systematic effort on the part
of the administration’s public image handlers to capitalize upon the
fear, confusion and the vague sense of a need for revenge to “sell”
its policy of pre-emptive warfare, extending American empire and tightening
its control over Middle Eastern oil reserves. [15]
If 9-11 and its aftermath
prove to be, upon further examination, an elaborate example of the
politics of distraction, it must be emphasized that this profound
and extensive dissimulation was not simply the result of a few manipulative
individuals working alone in secret. The fact is that it would only
be possible – or, perhaps, inevitable -- because of the historic and
dramatic collapse of professional journalism standards in America in recent years. Simple
techniques of investigative journalism and persistent questioning
would have been sufficient to reveal to the public what was going
on, if Americans had a lively, independent and functioning press.
The fact is, however, we no longer have any such thing.
Through corporate media
concentration, facilitated since the Reagan years through the systematic
deregulation of ownership rules, the news profession of journalism
has become an “industry.” Moreover, this industry has been purchased
by and is now operated as a fully owned subsidiary of the entertainment
business. With the Disney Corporation owning a major vehicle of news
projection in America, is it any wonder that
Mickey Mouse seems newsworthy and political reports looks like they
are filled with cartoon characters?
The simultaneous collapse
of the news profession and the cut-throat competition between large
corporations for the ever increasing control of American entertainment
media has meant that citizens are increasingly treated as fans in
an escalating, self-delusional sequence of make-believe scenarios
that appear absurd in the world at large but remain the subject of
intense and fierce debate in what has become the side-show of American
political life. The tragedy is that these make-believe scenarios
have such a devastating impact in the real world. The proposition
that the Afghan people should be bombed and the country occupied because
some members of an extremist movement lived in its hills was patently
ridiculous as an idea to anyone who did not understand the “O.K. Corral”
mentality of American leadership and its enchanted fans. The notion
that Iraq constituted an imminent
threat to the United States because of imagined WMD
was similarly absurd to anyone outside the spell manufactured by Hollywood
scriptwriters and foisted systematically upon a bewildered public,
who were led to believe they had a right for “revenge” in some movie-like
“showdown.”
The delusions do not stop
here. On virtually all environmental issues there is a growing gap
between the politician’s representation of truth and the underlying
realities of our common global circumstance. The climate issue in
particular provides a striking example of this.
As a candidate for President
in the 2000 campaign George Bush professed an interest in limiting
carbon emissions, but shortly after assuming office in 2001, Bush
and his supporters from the carbon industries sought ways to re-position
climate change as “theory” rather than fact. Lobbyists for the fossil
fuels industries paid scholars and consulting “experts” to appear
around the country and on the national media to challenge the findings
of the international teams of scientists who had been carefully documenting
global climate change since the late 1980s.
The steps by which this was accomplished have been well documented
by the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, Ross Gelbspan,
in two books: The Heat Is On and Boiling Point. [16] Additional
revealing reports, drawing upon Gelbspan’s pioneering work, have been
undertaken as part of Bill Moyer’s program Now [17] as part of the Public Broadcasting
System. What Gelbspan refers to as a “massive campaign of deception
and disinformation” is really, in his words, a form of “corruption
masquerading as conservatism.” [18]
There have been immediate
and disturbing consequences for the professional journalists that
have sought to expose the corruption of the Bush administration’s
energy and climate policymaking. We now know, for example, that
the Moyer’s program, Now, has been selected for particular
surveillance and criticism by Kenneth Tomlinson, President Bush’s
recent appointee as Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
On June 16, 2005 , Democracy Now relates that:
The New York Times is reporting that investigators
at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are examining more than
$14,000 in payments made under contract to a man who compiled reports
on the political views and backgrounds of guests appearing on the
PBS program NOW with Bill Moyers. The paper says that the corporation's
Republican chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, took the unusual step of
signing the contracts personally. The inspector general is looking
at the contracts signed by Tomlinson with a man named Fred Mann
to monitor the political leanings of "Now." Mann was listed
in the contracts as living in Indianapolis and officials at the
corporation said they knew nothing about him. The inquiry was requested
by two Democrats, Representatives John Dingell of Michigan and David
Obey of Wisconsin, after they learned about the monitoring. The
Inspector General is also investigating $15,000 in payments to two
Republican lobbyists last year that were not disclosed to the corporation's
board. The Times says that one of the lobbyists was retained at
the direction of Tomlinson and the other at the suggestion of his
Republican predecessor, who remains on the board. [19]
Not able to counter the
overwhelming evidence aired on PBS’s program Now linking Bush’s
climate policy to the energy industry, Tomlinson is trying to dismantle
the structure of public broadcasting itself, lest citizens become
informed about these and other pressing issues from which the President
and his backers have mobilized the politics of distraction to hide
for so long.
The underlying problem is
that collectively after so many years of celebrities entering politics
and politicians play acting constructed celebrity roles Americans
have lost the capacity to judge what constitutes truth. As Boorstin
has observed, in America we have experienced what
he calls [20]
…the shift in common experience from an emphasis
on “truth” to an emphasis on “credibility.” All of us…all American
citizen-consumers – are daily less interested in whether something
is a fact than in whether it is convenient that it should be believed….What
seems important is not truth but verisimilitude.
Verisimilitude never asks
“what is true?” but rather what “seems to be true?” – that
is, “what is believable?.” What is believable is, in turn,
derived from what we expect to believe will come next in a preconceived
plot or scenario. The American public has come to settle for what
is believable in well scripted fictions that have been crafted for
their consumption by public relations operatives and in the dominant
news/entertainment corporations.
At some point the American
people may start to dislike the future that these pseudo-cowboys,
fictitious celebrities, and public relations operatives have crafted
for them. Despite the best efforts of Hollywood screen writers and the news spin-meisters, world
events and global ecological reality cannot simply be re-cast into
a convenient movie script for their well-financed, hick heroes.
Concerning the climate change
issues, for example, it has become apparent that many of the administration’s
most important science-based documents on climate were, in fact, heavily
edited by Philip Cooney, a former lobbyist of the American Petroleum
Institute who had come to work in the Bush Administration as the Chief
of Staff for the Council on Environmental Quality. Cooney was a lawyer
with no training as a scientist, yet his rephrasing of scientific
research passed for the administration’s representation of reality
until it was finally exposed. Cooney resigned “to spend more time
with his family” – as the formula would have it – yet within days
we learn he is to take a job with Exxon Corporation. [21]
The transparency of the
corruption and the complete phoniness of Bush’s play-acting as the
Happy Hick became apparent to anyone who was watching the press conference
that President Bush held jointly with Tony Blair at the White House
on Tuesday 7 June. On the same day that Philip Cooney’s role in doctoring
the science was being detailed to the world in the morning edition
of the New York Times, President Bush himself stood up and
continued to repeat the contention that his administration was committed
to undertaking further research “to learn more about it [climate change].” [22]
In the evening news programs American political commentators
failed to underscore the irony of his statements in light of the evidence
revealed in the morning papers. No news program juxtaposed the President’s
speech with copies of the Cooney pencil edited science reports.
Editorials on June 9 reflected
some of the amazement that commentators began to feel as they began
to assess the impact of the Cooney story. As The Seattle Post
Intelligencer summed it up: “…the Bush team will always prefer
'let's pretend' to science about global warming” [23] Their comment emphasizes how successful
the play-acting of the Happy Hick has been. Americans have come to
expect their President and his “team” to play “let’s pretend” with
their future.
Eventually, and perhaps
in the not too distant future, there will be real and costly consequences
for the extended dream state of “let’s pretend” that the American
public has allowed its celebrity-leaders to cast as a spell upon it.
Boorstin warned us decades ago that we were headed in seriously wrong
direction: [24]
We risk being the first people in history
to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive,
so ‘realistic’ that they can live in them. We are the most illusioned
people on earth. Yet we dare not become disillusioned, because our
illusions are the very house in which we live; they are our news,
our heroes, our adventure, our forms of art, our very experience.
Boorstin’s prescription
for salvation from this syndrome of celebrity induced illusion was
for Americans to “wake up” from their dream state and begin to perceive
the real world beyond that of their images. As he wrote, “We must
first awake before we can walk in the right direction.” [25] He elaborated by saying, [26]
Each of us must disenchant himself, must
moderate his expectations, must prepare himself to receive messages
coming in from the outside. The first step is to begin to suspect
that there may be a world out there, beyond our present or future
power to image or imagine.
He went on to add in words that sound
disturbingly prophetic in retrospect: [27]
We should not worry over how to export more of the American
images among which we live. We should not try to persuade others
to share our illusions. We should try to reach outside our images.
We should seek new ways of letting messages reach us; from our own
past, from God, from the world which we may hate or think we hate.
Judging from events since September
11th 2001, Americans have learned very little from this advice penned
nearly forty five years ago. The pseudo-event has taken center stage
and celebrities reign supreme in American political consciousness.
In fact, public service itself seems to be just an alternate path
to celebrity in a world that has come to be governed by what one author
has called “The Importance of Being Famous.” Oli North and
Newt Gingrich command significant speaker fees on the celebrity circuit.
Because of their celebrity status, few people remember their illegal
and immoral behavior or their systematic betrayal of the public trust
while they were government employees. Meanwhile, Al Gore is a much
sought after as a speaker for World Environment Day, and Bob Dole
sustains his fame through his erectile dysfunction commercials.
GW himself flips into the “Ahh-Shucks-Cowboy”
mode whenever he is confronted with a query of any substance -- either
by foreign leaders or by poorly socialized members of the press corps
who have not kept to the appropriate pre-scripted questions. The
obsequious press allows him to play this role because they think that
is what the public has come to expect of him and of them. Reporters
have become stenographers, faithfully recording the press releases
issued to them by government spokespersons. All the while the power
to shape and control the public’s illusions has passed into the hands
of fewer and fewer corporations in whose interest it is to orchestrate
national politics as a colorful sideshow, keeping the voting fans
amused.
By diverting
American public attention from what is being done in their name at
the expense of future generations in this country and around the world,
Bush and his fossil fuel supporters have proved to be masters of the
politics of distraction. Yet both foreign and American scientists
are speaking out unequivocally. As they point out, in America we must awake from the dream state
that celebrity politicians have conspired with us as a movie-going
public to produce if we are to have any hope of avoiding the impending
global nightmare that our current carbon-intensive policies will inevitably
engender. A new vision of the problem is needed, but in addition,
new forms of political communication are urgently required to mobilize
the human community to work for its own survival.
[4] The concept of the “politics of distraction” has
been mentioned by Andrew A. Samwick in a highly suggestive, but tantalizingly
short insight published as an editorial or program profile in “The
Direct Line” at Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and Social Sciences.
See: Andrew A. Samwick, "(Editorial),"
The Direct Line, Fall Term, September 2004. [http://rockefeller.dartmouth.edu/about/directline.html].
Dr. Samwick, the Director of the Rockefeller Center, is an economist who is a specialist in
social security reform. He served as the chief economist on President
Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors from 2003-2005. His comments
imply a certain level of frustration with what he terms “the politics
of distraction” during the 2004 election cycle because as practiced
by the press they seem to prevent the public from making meaningful
judgments on important issues that affect their lives.
The sense in which the phrase is used in this
article is more extensive than Mr. Samwick’s usage suggests, for it
is intended here to refer to a more or less conscious strategy pursued
by those in politics who wish to accomplish their essential goals
without excessive press scrutiny or any public awareness whatsoever.
Skillfully pursuing the “politics of distraction” has allowed Karl
Rove and Karen Hughes, for example, to craft an image of a maladroit,
pseudo-Texan for the President which has served to keep the public
amused and the mainstream press diverted from the activities of Vice-President
Cheney and the neocons.
[5] Darrell M. West and John
M. Orman, Celebrity Politics (New York,: Prentice Hall, 2002).
This short study provides a convenient synthesis
of the trends in American politics and a useful typology of different
types of “celebrity politicos” (p.2).
[6] This statement is the oft-quoted definition given
by Daniel Boorstin in the initial publication of his book, The Image,
in 1961. See Daniel J. Boorstin, The
Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Vintage
Books, 1992), p. 27.
[7] See the work of Maureen Orth, The Importance
of Being Famous (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004),
p. 17, Part 1 and subsequent chapters.
[9] The characteristics of a “pseudo-event” are discussed
at length by Boorstin in Chapters 1 and 2 of his 1961 book. See
particularly p. 11-12, where he lists its key attributes: “(1)
It is not spontaneous, but comes about because someone has planned,
planted, or incited it….(2) It is planted primarily….for the immediate
purpose of being reported or reproduced….(3) Its relation to the
underlying reality of the situation is ambiguous…[and] (4) Usually
it is intended to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
[11] As Boorstin wryly observed, p. 12: “A full explanation
of the origin and rise of pseudo-events would be nothing less than
a history of modern
America.”
[12] See David T.Z. Mindich, Tuned
Out: Why Americans under 40 Don't Follow the News (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2005).
[14] See: Michael C. Ruppert, Crossing
the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the
Age of Oil (New York: New Society Publishers, 2004).
[15] Jeremy Earp and Sut Jahally,
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire
(New York: Interlink, 2004). and see as well the DVD version of this
perspective available through: http://www.hijackingcatastrophe.org/
[16] The full titles of these books convey more accurately
the dimensions of the problem. See Ross Gelbspan, The Heat
Is On : The Climate Crisis, the Cover-up, the Prescription,
Updated ed. (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1998).
and Ross Gelbspan, Boiling
Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists
Are Fueling the Climate Crisis--and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster
(New York: Basic Books, 2004). In addition, see the recent study published
in a special issue of the magazine, Mother Jones magazine, entitled
“While the World Burns,” particularly Ross Gelbspan, "Snowed,"
Mother Jones Magazine, May/June 2005. [http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/snowed.html]
and Chris Mooney, "Some
Like It Hot," Mother Jones Magazine, May/June 2005
[http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/some_like_it_hot.html]
.
[21] For the news accounts of this “scandal” see:
Andrew C. Revkin, "Official
Played Down Emissions' Links to Global Warming," The New
York Times, 7 June 2005 [http://query.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?tntget=2005%2f06%2f07%2fscience%2f07cnd%2dclimate%2ehtml&pagewanted=print]
; Rhys Blakely and Helen Nugent,
"Whitewash at the White House?," The Times Online,
8 June 2005. [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1645867,00.html]
; MSNBC, Report: Official
Edited Warming: White House Lawyer Once Worked for American Petroleum
Institute (MSNBC.Com, 8 June 2005) [rtsp://msnbc.wmod.llnwd.net/a275/e1/video/100/nn_greg_globalwarming_050608.asf
and http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8137646/]
; BBC News Online, "Bush
Aide 'Edited Climate Papers'," BBC News Online, 9 June,
2005, 09:47 GMT 10:47 UK Thursday. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4075986.stm]
and Democracy Now, White
House Environmental Chief Cooney Watered Down Climate Reports
(Democracy Now, 9 June 2005) [http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2005/june/video/dnB20050609a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=27:24&end=46:12.6].
The initial stories were circulated about
Philip Cooney’s editing practices on 7 June. On June 9th, the New
York Times carried an editorial on the subject. By 10 June Philip
Cooney had resigned, and on June 15th, Andrew Revkin reported that
Cooney was to take a position with Exxon. See: The New York Times, "A
(White) House Party for Lobbyists," The New York Times,
9 June 2005. [http://query.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?tntget=2005/06/09/opinion/09thu2.html&tntemail0=&emc=tnt&pagewanted=print]
; Andrew C. Revkin, "Editor
of Climate Reports Resigns," The New York Times, 10
June 2005. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/10/politics/11cooney.long.html?pagewanted=print&oref=login]
and Andrew C. Revkin, "Ex-Bush
Aide Who Edited Climate Reports to Join Exxonmobil," The
New York Times, 15 June 2005. [http://query.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?tntget=2005/06/15/science/14cnd-climate.html&tntemail0=&emc=tnt&pagewanted=print].
Earp, Jeremy, and Sut Jahally. Hijacking Catastrophe:
9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire. New York: Interlink,
2004.
Gelbspan, Ross. The Heat Is On : The Climate
Crisis, the Cover-up, the Prescription. Updated ed. Reading,
Mass.: Perseus Books, 1998.
________. Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big
Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate
Crisis--and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster. New York: Basic
Books, 2004.
Mindich, David T.Z. Tuned Out: Why Americans
under 40 Don't Follow the News. New York: Oxford University Press,
2005.
Orth, Maureen. The Importance of Being Famous.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004.
Ruppert, Michael C. Crossing the Rubicon: The
Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.
New York: New Society Publishers, 2004.
West, Darrell M., and John M. Orman. Celebrity
Politics. New York,: Prentice Hall, 2002.