Showdown at the Crawford Corral
Today, every news event must be of Earth-shattering importance. Everyone must be a conquering hero, or a tragic villain.
 

April 5 2005
Counterbias.com
by Brian Adler
 

Looks like somebody’s hankering after a fight. A famous Texan is polishing up his pistol – the one that used to belong to Saddam Hussein. Soon he’ll head over to one of the windows in the Oval Office and take a practice shot at one of those ornery Democrats. Maybe Ted Kennedy will be passing by. Or better yet… Barbara Boxer. 

Then again, all of this could be taking place in Crawford, the true home of fable and fantasy, so dear to the Republican heart. George W. Bush always feels more comfortable at his own place. No uncontrolled intrusions. Stories spinning faster than tumbleweed in a Ju-ly breeze. Condi Rice drivin’ accusations like a cowboy drives a herd of bull… uh… I mean… bulls. 

We’re lucky none of this has actually happened… yet. But soon… soon… somebody is going to have to set the record straight – and it shouldn’t be some addle-brained cowpoke taking credit for everything that is right with the world just because he’s got the big guns to win the duel. It is not his honor… it is yours, mine, and ours. A pious man passed away this weekend. A man of many talents, he accomplished much. He helped the poor. He helped the underprivileged. 

He has also been credited with destroying communism in Eastern Europe.

“Destroyed communism in Eastern Europe?  Hey… wait a minute!  I thought that was Ronald Reagan.”

“Reagan?  What are you talking about?  I thought it was George H.W. Bush.”

“Now, now, let’s not fight. Just drop that ‘H” and you’ll see who deserves the real credit.”

If that is not the truth today, then it will be tomorrow. The truth is like a weapon of mass destruction – you never know where to look for it. Today’s mass media finds this kind of truth very entertaining. In the past year or so, the American public has been treated to a host of different explanations for the end of totalitarianism and the growth of democracy. First it was Ronald Reagan. His presidency was an eight-year paradise. He called the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire,” and then invaded a tiny island in the British Commonwealth to prove that America meant business. 

More recently there was George W. Bush. He has only been in office for a little over four years, but these have been the best four years of everyone’s life – especially the overwhelming majority of fifty-one percent of Americans who gave him that famous mandate (and a checking account filled with millions and billions in political capital). This President of the United States invaded the territory of a third rate power because that land’s leader was concealing the world’s largest collection of non-existent deadly weapons. More destruction and DeLay. And then suddenly the media realized: George W. Bush wasn’t looking for nuclear bombs, or anthrax sprays… he was searching for democracy!

And George W. Bush might have continued to hold – and to flaunt – the democracy title if it hadn’t been for a much older man who had the audacity to depart this world from his palace in Rome. 

“From a palace! Dang! It sounds like John Kerry.” 

“That’s enough, George!”

Today’s media is extremely fond of presenting its own version of history. Our world now moves so fast that time itself has become meaningless. We are no longer trusted to remember what happened fifteen or twenty years ago because… that is ancient history. Twenty years is the same as twenty months, or twenty minutes.  Our favorite newsreader tells us that we, the American Public, won’t remember the Terry Schiavo incident when various loud mouth Republican crusaders are up for re-election in 2006.

We were told we wouldn’t remember in 2004, that many of these same kind souls stole the presidential election in 2000. And of course, it goes without saying that we don’t remember that the Soviet Union once had a leader named Mikhail Gorbachev – the man who introduced Glasnost and made possible the changes that brought down one of the world’s most feared totalitarian regimes. In fact, how many of us even remember that it was another Bush who claimed to have vanquished communism and dictatorship first? 

24/7 is a lot of news – too much for one talking head to handle. And when you have many talking heads you have to make that news as exciting as possible so viewers will watch. Every event must be of Earth-shattering importance. Everyone must be a conquering hero, or a tragic villain, either slaying the dragon, or being the dragon. Pope John Paul II was a great man. He was also very religious and very humble. Certainly he would wish to be remembered honestly, as an individual who did his part to make the lives of others a little better, and to make our world a little brighter. 

But His Holiness does not need to be co-opted by George W. Bush’s war on tyranny and terror. Yes, John Paul II visited his homeland in the 1980s. Yes, he gave encouragement to an oppressed people. But he did not end tyranny any more than Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, or even George W. Bush. It is perhaps understandable that a devout man – at the moment of his death – would be linked to any and all noble causes. Yet in a world where news is so often not news, history does not need to become the fuel that drives the engine of sensationalism. Give credit where credit is due, but don’t subtract it from others to add it on to those who do not deserve it.

The modern media bears a great part of the blame for manufacturing the current situation. In the case of Terri Schiavo, both the network and cable news outlets manufactured an even-handed battle between those who endorsed Mr. Schiavo’s belief that his wife should be able to die with dignity, and those who supported keeping Ms. Schiavo alive no matter what the cost. The reality was different: a tiny group of politicians, and a small (small out of a country of nearly three hundred million) but loud minority faced off against an entire nation. The media called this a “divided” America.

And the media continues to cultivate this lop-sided, off-balance behemoth. Instead of highlighting all of the insidious lies that have come spewing out of this Administration like so much pollution – the result of one of George W. Bush’s “environment-friendly” initiatives – the media has chosen to laud the President for his “political skill.” A wrong-headed social security “reform” is going down to defeat and, instead of exposing the facts about this potential blight, newspapers and television stations are falling over each other to say that “the President isn’t finished yet.” 

George W. Bush never fails… or so it seems. All news that is not good news for this Administration either gets spun and twisted into something like the clanking chains worn by the ghost of Jacob Marley, or it gets covered up as surely as that same man’s mortal remains. The President who went into Iraq for WMD, and found Democracy; who is all for the rule of law, and opposes normal due process; and who wishes to “work with” the rest of the world and appoints John Bolton to the U.N., and Paul Wolfowitz to the World Bank – this man is held up as a model of integrity and constancy. A man who ignored Pope John Paul II’s warning that the invasion of Iraq would not constitute a just war is now the same man who is clamoring for an invitation to the Pontiff’s funeral. George W. Bush has basked in the glow of false holiness for too long already. It is time the American People wake up and see that they are nearly penned in…

… Penned in at the Crawford Corral.  

And soon all the guns in the world won’t be enough to get you out!
 

Brian Adler is a freelance writer and an avid history buff. He writes/researches for a company that produces factual essays and reports on a wide range of subjects. He also writes screenplays and short stories.

 

 

 

---