SF GateA few months ago, she [Sec'y of State Rice] decided to write an opinion piece about Lebanon. She enlisted John Chambers, chief executive officer of Cisco Systems as a co-author, and they wrote about public/private partnerships and how they might be of use in rebuilding Lebanon after last summer's war. No one would publish it.
Think about that. Every one of the major newspapers approached refused to publish an essay by the secretary of state. Price Floyd, who was the State Department's director of media affairs until recently, recalls that it was sent to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and perhaps other papers before the department finally tried a foreign publication, the Financial Times of London, which also turned it down.
As a last-ditch strategy, the State Department briefly considered translating the article into Arabic and trying a Lebanese paper. But finally they just gave up. "I kept hearing the same thing: 'There's no news in this.' " Floyd said. The piece, he said, was littered with glowing references to President Bush's wise leadership. "It read like a campaign document."
Floyd left the State Department on April 1, after 17 years. He said he was fed up with the relentless partisanship and the unwillingness to consider other points of view. His supervisor, a political appointee, kept "telling me to shut up," he said. Nothing like that had occurred under Presidents Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush. "They just wanted us to be Bush automatons."
This is what Rove et al have wanted since day one. A whole administration made up of automatons (automata?) A group of men and women who live and eat and breathe and sell George W. Bush 24-7. They wanted to use advertising and marketing techniques and "sell" the Bush brand to Americans everywhere: Government is bad. Private industry (i.e., profit, i.e., greed) is good. Government workers are slackers. Corporate workers are masters of the universe. Helping people through government is bad. Helping people through narrow-minded irrational ideologies (faith-based funding) is good.
And finally, finally, after almost 6 years, the American public is starting to see and hear through the spin and the fluff and the framing.
I wish they'd gotten it sooner. Before the Constitution was put through the shredder. Before we'd spent a half trillion (a trillion is $1000
per second since Jesus was born) on another narrow-minded ideology. Before we'd lost stature and intelligence.
The automatons are throwing off their bolts and reclaiming their flesh. I hope it's not too late.
