Those Bush pictures are designed to play to his base

[xray s]

Two images of Bush flashed across the internet this week. One a joke...



and the other a candid snapshot into his mind while he sat at the UN listening to speakers...



Now of course, the reaction to these images from the left, as well as the sane political middle, is one of bemused disgust. But I submit to you that these pictures actually play in a very different way to Bush's base. In fact, I am almost convinced that they were planted by Rove to give the base a wink and nudge. The first image says "I don't give a shit about those niggers wading in NOLA". The second says "I don't give a shit about what these French loving furriners are saying at the UN"

The base loves it. Mission accomplished.

[Tace]

1. You Sick Fuck -- You're Right!

Wahhhhhhh!

[populistdriven]

2. Stop trying to think like Rush Limbaugh!

Seriously that sounds EXACTLY like Rush's drug induced logic.

[daninthemoon]

3. I'm afraid your'e dead on.

[O.M.B.inOhio]

4. I don't know about these, but there's no doubt they use this strategy

We've seen this from time to time: the wink & nod to a racist base. As early as the "rats" ad against Gore-Lieberman, I wondered, Are the assholes' PR people so good that they can code their message so as to be received by a constituency that probably doesn't believe in coded signifiers in the first place? "Rats" recalled for me the imagery of Nazi antisemitic propaganda, and I wasn't so sure they didn't just reinvent it. But they've done it again and again, subtler that "Willie Horton," the communication beyond PC rhetoric, reassuring a racist base.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. No, you are either being silly or being obtuse

So many people here have bought into double think and triple think and huge Rube Goldberg conspiracy theories and depressed capitulation that they overthink the obvious.

The fishing picture is a simple obvious fake, a spoof, a lark, nothing more. Not a very good PS job and not very good at satire (too obvious, blatant).

The bathroom note is plain. Very human, but it shows how artless and guileless Bush is. Nothing more. No plant. It is a Reuters photo, pure and simple.

[alarcojon]

6. I agree

This kind of speculation is silly. The first photo could have been made by one of us. Why even suspect Rove had a hand in it? And if the right devotes any attention to the second picture, it is to accuse the left of going too far in our hatred of Bush. If their goal was to throw red meat to the base, why make it about going to the bathroom - and why throw in Condi? That just opens him up for late-night TV and talk radio jokes, and is in fact red meat for the left - as was evidenced by the flurry of activity here on DU over it.

This is of course not to say that KKKarl doesn't wink and nudge to the base - he does it all the time. These photos are simply not instances of it, IMO.