Wonderful Frank Rich column today, assails Shrub's carrier photo-op [View All]

[GCP]

"Top Gun vs. Total Recall
Only in America could a guy who struts in an action-hero's Hollywood costume and barks macho lines from a script pass for a plausible political leader. But if George W. Bush can get away with it, why should Arnold Schwarzenegger be pilloried for the same antics?
At least Mr. Schwarzenegger is a show-biz pro. He never would have signed on for a remake of "Top Gun" without first ensuring that it would have the same happy ending as the original. He never would have allowed himself to look as scared as the abandoned kid in "Home Alone" while begging the nation for cash and patience last Sunday night. He would have dismissed B-movie dialogue like "dead or alive" and "bring 'em on" with a curt "hasta la vista, baby!" "

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"It is hilarious to watch conservatives — the same conservatives who often decry phony Hollywood liberals and their followers — betray their own inviolate principles to bask in Arnold's hulking movie-star aura so that they might possibly gain a nominal Republican victory in the bargain. Even the 1977 Oui magazine interview in which Mr. Schwarzenegger bragged about participating in orgies — not to mention his repeated admissions of drug use — can't frighten them away."

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" Washington commentators see through these theatrics when the special effects are ham-fisted enough (as in Mr. Kerry's case) or when they literally have Hollywood written all over them (as in Mr. Schwarzenegger's). But since 9/11, too many journalists have been all too willing to look the other way when the Bush administration engages in Hollywood showmanship to cover up its failings. Some have gone so far as to help foment the fictions. Showtime, the cable network, boasts that no fewer than three journalists, including the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, were involved in assuring the accuracy and balance of the docudrama "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis," first shown last Sunday while the actual George W. Bush was addressing the nation. But this film, made with full Bush administration cooperation (including that of the president himself), is propaganda so untroubled by reality that it's best viewed as a fitting memorial to Leni Riefenstahl. The script vouched for by Mr. Krauthammer and a couple of other Beltway boys presents Dick Cheney as a mere supplicant to the all-knowing Mr. Bush and somehow lets the administration (though not its predecessor) off the hook for letting Osama bin Laden and his Saudi enablers slip away.

New polls reveal that Americans increasingly realize that they have been had. Reruns are not kind to this White House's scripted costume drama of May 1; the seams show. More and more viewers recognize that the banner reading "Mission Accomplished" in the "Top Gun" spectacle was idle set decoration, especially given that the number of American casualties in that mission has more than doubled since then. They know, too, that the president's uniform was from stock, and perhaps by now have heard how his speech was deliberately delayed almost three hours after his tailhook landing so that it would fall into that magical twilight hour that cinematographers find most romantic. Some may even realize that the president's breezy dialogue upon deplaning — "I miss flying, I can tell you that" — was too ironic by half, given that he had actually missed some of his required flights during his stay-at-home stint for the Texas Air National Guard while others fought the Vietnam War."

There's plenty more good stuuf here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/arts/14RICH.html?pagewanted=1