Living in a Parody World

By: Lisa Kadonaga

I don't know about you, but for me the entire past year has been tinged with unreality. The other day I searched back through my memory, trying to pinpoint the exact moment when I felt things were starting to come unhinged.

I guess my first clue that something was not quite right was during the presidential debates, when the Governor of Texas (the "Education Governor", according to his own press releases) joked that all he would have to do was pronounce his name correctly, for people to be impressed that he wasn't as dumb as they'd thought. I like a bit of humor in a campaign, but he seemed to be quite earnest about this. When the media started to trumpet his "victory", to hear them talk you'd think he'd rendered Vice President Gore speechless in all three debates, then done handsprings across the stage and hoisted Jim Lehrer into the air for an encore.

Then came the hoopla and excitement of election night. The networks trotted out their snazziest graphics, and in the fog of predictions by over-caffeinated news anchors, it took awhile to notice that something was different this time. During the wee small hours of November 8^th, America walked off the edge of the cliff - and like Wile E. Coyote, it didn't notice right away, and kept right on going.

What happened next was absurd. It was unbelievable. The new Bush administration confirmed, as Secretary of Energy, a man who had stated his belief that the Department of Energy should be abolished. They passed an obscenely-large tax cut, even as the economy began to falter. They broke international treaties, alienated dozens of former allies, and virtually drove Russia and China into each other's arms. And then came September.

There was no real-life precedent for the scenes of devastation on September 11^th. "It was like a movie" is the phrase we hear again and again. No wonder Washington is asking Hollywood screenwriters for help forecasting possible conflicts. This spring's tongue-in-cheek X-Files spinoff "The Lone Gunmen" imagined an attempt to crash a passenger jet into the World Trade Center - not even their writers thought there'd be two of them.

As the weeks went by, George W. Bush himself seemed more and more unreal. On my bookshelf is Richard Rohmer's novel "Exxoneration", written two decades ago. It depicts a Texas oilman president, a former military pilot who insists on flying Air Force One himself. When angry, he blurts out things like "this ain't a tea party!". He makes a point of studying Canadian history and geography, just so he can chide us about geopolitics, and lay claim to our oil and gas reserves. When I first read the book, I disliked this character intensely. I thought he was an overbearing bully - I was even angry at Rohmer, for making such an absurd caricature.

I didn't reckon on someone like George W. Bush.

Even Rohmer didn't see this guy coming. As it turns out, Mr. Bush was born in Connecticut, but he wears cowboy boots, and exaggerates his accent in front of the press. (One of his own relatives, the Ambassador to the Czech Republic, claimed this summer that the man can't even ride a horse.)

Mr. Bush trained as a fighter pilot, but he never talks about his flying experiences. He went to elite prep schools, and Yale and Harvard, but flaunts his ignorance. Rohmer's fictional President appears thoughtful, statesmanlike, and genuine by comparison.

There are times when I've wondered whether we've walked into a televised parody - some members of the administration look as uncomfortable as celebrities coerced to perform in a comic sketch. During a preliminary visit to the Bush estate in Crawford, the dignified Colin Powell said up front that he "didn't do ranch wear" - presumably averting his eyes from the spectacle of Senator Lott of Mississippi, who was sporting brand-new denims and a 20-gallon hat with a feather in it. A few months later, Secretary Powell was up on stage dressed as a cowpoke, dutifully singing a duet with his Japanese counterpart.

The Bush initiative encouraging schoolchildren to send dollar bills to the White House reminds me of a satirical movie - "Americathon" (1979). It envisions the year 1998, when the United States is bankrupt and the president has to resort to a telethon to raise funds. (I'm sure that the thing about being in hock to the "Nike Corporation" is just coincidence.) As a side-note, Cybill Shepherd makes an appearance - her co-star from "The Last Picture Show", Timothy Bottoms, went on to portray George W. Bush on Comedy Central.

A friend in the States commented that when she watches the Chief Executive addressing the nation on TV, she gets the eerie feeling that she's watching a Bush impersonator - and not a very convincing one, at that - doing his "evildoer", "make no mistake", and "smoke them out of their caves" shtick. (Apparently a good impersonator can rate four or five times the presidential salary, calculated on an hourly basis.)

Dismayed, my friend added: "But it's REAL LIFE... Bush league real life anyhow. We're living in a parody world."