Bushspeak

Joe Pickett Joe_Pickett at HMCO.COM
Fri Oct 20 15:44:21 UTC 2000


FWIW, here's the Hitchens article.

Why Dubya Can't Read  -- Christopher Hitchens

I once knew a fairly intelligent man who disconcerted me one day by
denouncing the arbitrary domination of the then-Soviet Union by a
sinister-sounding body named "the Politurbo." Allowance could be made in
his
case; not everybody understood the abbreviations of "agitprop" and the
crude
origins of Com-speak. Had the term been   spelled out as "Political Bureau"
I
am sure he would have got there easily in the end.  But what unhorsed me at
the time was this: He must have seen the word "Politburo" in print many
times, and also heard it spoken very often, without ever registering the
connection.

The term for this failure of mental word-processing is dyslexia, and it
can occur in mild and severe forms. I used to have the job of tutoring a
dyslexic child, and I know something about the symptoms. So I kicked myself
hard when I read the profile of Governor George W. Bush, by my friend and
colleague Gail Sheehy, in this month's Vanity Fair. All those jokes and
cartoons and websites about his gaffes, bungles and  malapropisms? We've
been
unknowingly teasing the afflicted. The poor guy is obviously dyslexic, and
dyslexic to the point of near-illiteracy. Numerous experts and friends of
the
dynasty give Sheehy their considered verdict to this effect.

The symptoms and clues have been staring us in the face for some time.
Early in the campaign, Bush said that he did indeed crack the odd book and
was even at that moment absorbed by James Chace's biography of Dean
Acheson.
But when asked to report anything that was in the damn volume, the governor
pulled up an empty net.

His brother Neil is an admitted dyslexic. His mother has long been a
patron of various foundations and charities associated with dyslexia. How
plain it all now seems.

The rhetorical and linguistic train wrecks in the speeches of Reagan and
Bush Senior  were of a different quality, arising variously from hysterical
lying, brutish ignorance,  senile decay and cultural deprivation. But the
problem was chiefly syntactical. The  additional humiliations of Dubya
derive
from utter failures of word recognition. A
man who has somehow got this far in politics and refers to "tacular"
weapons
is  unclear (or do I mean nuclear?) on the concept. In free-trade language,
tariffs and barriers are not necessarily conterminous, but in no
circumstance
are they "terriers." To use "vile" for "viable" might look like misfortune,
but to employ "inebriating" for "enthralling" looks like carelessness,
especially in someone with his booze and cocaine record. Bush doesn't want
our enemies to "hold us hostile"; I must say I agree with what I'm sure he
didn't mean to say. Confusing "handcuffs" with "cufflinks" might be a
yuppie
slip; at any rate it presumably doesn't mean softness on crime. As for
"Reading is the basics of all learning," well, there you are.

Does any of this matter? Of course it does. Bush has already claimed with
hand on heart that he personally scrutinized the death-row appeals of more
than a hundred condemned wretches in the shocking Texas prison system; we
now
have to face the fact that he not only did not review the clemency
petitions
but could not have read them even if he wanted to. Aides now remember the
times they presented the governor or the candidate with that crucial
briefing
paper, only to see him toss it on the desk and demand a crisp, verbal,
"bottom line" summary of its contents.

Decisive, right? Wrong.

I know from my teaching experience that nature very often compensates the
dyslexic with a higher IQ or some grant of intuitive intelligence. If this
is
true for Bush it hasn't yet become obvious; his Texas chief of staff, Clay
Johnson, told Gail Sheehy that the attention span of his boss is, not to
euphemize matters overmuch, somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen minutes.
In
other words, and as far as we know,  he has only the downside of his
difficulty, which is attention-deficit disorder. In the high noon of the
age
of information, the Republican Party packages and presents a provincial
ignoramus who can neither read nor write. Woof.

But now here's another amazing thing. Nelson Rockefeller was dyslexic,
though nobody knew it until after he'd become Vice President. Ronald
Reagan's
neurons and synapses were being devoured by Alzheimer's from at least...
well, I'd say 1982 from personal observation, though experts differ. Bill
Clinton was understood by some of the closest of his circle, including his
awful wife, to be a pathological liar and sexual delinquent when he was
still
lucky enough to be governor of Arkansas. Usually, these and many other
disqualifications, like Nixon's alcoholism, await the patient, too-late
forensic attention of the court historians. Yet here's a man whose aides
and
flacks are visibly white-lipped every time he opens his mouth, and who
should
be seeking remedial care but is instead seeking the presidential therapy
that
he   doesn't need, and nobody says a word. Nobody had the poor taste to
follow up Gail Sheehy's findings.

Ah, but Bush has a disability.... Can that be it? From "compassionate
conservatism" to compassion for the conservative? Well, I'm ready to feel
compassion for him. I want him to get all the help he needs (which will
probably involve him in emulating his flabbergasting running mate and
moving
his official residence to another and more compassionate state). But I
think,
in presidential terms, we should leave this child back and let him catch up
in his own special way at some later date.

Meanwhile, the press and the Democrats should either stop citing and
mocking the flubs or come right out and say what they mean. A danger of
heartlessness, even of callousness, exists. Seeking to explain away his
wastrel life and his obnoxious manner--nagging problems that persisted
until
his mid-40s--Bush invites us to believe that he mutated into finer
personhood
after having a personal encounter with God. The pious toads at the head of
the Democratic ticket are full of unction at this and any other
manifestation
of hypocrisy. In a farcical recent moment, Bush contradicted his own
mother,
who claimed he'd always read his Bible as a youngster, by telling the
Washington Post that he'd read no such thing. So--what if he had  meant to
say all along that he'd found a personal "dog"? The time to clear this up
is
now.



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