There's not enough media coverage of the anger against President George Bush on the home front, observes writer Siri Hustvedt. She's a Minnesotan who penned The Blindfold, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, and What I Loved.
In The Guardian's epic-length survey of writers greatly disturbed by the Bush Presidency, she says:
There's an underestimation by the media of the anger against Bush. It's not only among liberals, but also among ordinary people who feel betrayed about the war, who feel angry about ordinary life, about how hard people have to work.
I have to agree. Imagine that during the Clinton years, as critics on the right became more vocal and – admit it – shrill, a well-known writer had authored a novel, for a major publisher, about someone contemplating the assassination of the President.
You can bet the nabobs of news would have been all over it: NYT, WaPo, L.A. Times, and dozens more major metro dailies; plus leading magazines.
Now let’s flash forward to the present. First, you may recall Nicholson Baker, who authored “Vox,” the book about phone sex that Monica Lewinsky gave to Clinton as their tawdry affair evolved. Now, Baker has upped the ante from phone sex to fictional high treason – oops – I mean a daringly original fulmination on fighting the evil that is Bush.
Baker’s recently-released “Checkpoint” (Knopf), a 115-page novella about two friends discussing the killing of Bush to sate one’s anti-Bush rage, is getting scant press.
A Google News search for “Checkpoint” AND “Bush” AND “assassination” shows the meager and often critical newspaper coverage of “Checkpoint” such as:
the Palm Beach Post;
an AP story picked up by the Indy Star;
and a piece in the redoubtable Tufts (University) Daily.
The lap dog media again under-estimates the anti-Bush rage sweeping the land.
Hell, I've done my part covering fear and loathing of Bush, here.
Plus here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Phew, now I need a Gatorade.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 14, 2004 10:18 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.rosenblog.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/509
Charles Krauthammer recently published a perceptive editorial on this subject [sorry, I don't recall the title or date] in the Washington Post. He points out, correctly I think, that this sort of rage springs from a sense of frustrated entitlement, from the conviction that they ought to be governing and would in fact be governing but for some malign conspiracy of people and events.
Something like this form of paranoia descended on the Republicans during the middle of the Roosevelt Revolution, though I do not think it ever produced a literature of assasination.
Krauthammer predicts that the Democrats will need more than consolation if they lose this election, too; they will need therapy. He should know. Krauthammer was a therapist.
Posted by: Tom Rekdal at September 14, 2004 01:23 PMI agree with your premice that a great deal of average Americans are angry at George W Bush, I am one of them. I do feel betrayed by not just him, but almost the entire Baby Boomer generation, of which I am part. I do not support the Iraq War, for many reasons not the least of which is we have better things to do with our money, like maybe to fix America, it is broke. I feel betrayed by the last thirty years of Presidential Politics, since Nixon canceled the Apollo moon landings and the last hope of this nation to open up a huge frontier and a source of wealth and jobs for many Americans. It has only gotten worse in my opinion. The real question is "What do us mad Americans do about our Anger?". For one, I plan on getting more politically involved, supporting an agenda for better educations for our children and middle class workers, health care (which we all need), displace oil as a major source of energy by going to alternatve non-polluting sources, and fixing the broken infrastructure in our inner cities. Not to mention trying to fix Global Warming and the Ozone Hole, instead of buryng our heads into the sand. I am a spacer, a believer in high technology, and positive that us Angry Americans need our own political party, since the two major parties no longer represent ANY of our interests or agendas. I wonder if anyone will do anything about it now that the election is over, and it appears that Bush has won. I even thought of leaving the US permanently, but there is no place to go that does not have its own sets of problems. Besides, we need to stay here and become a constant irritant to those misguided Americans that voted for Bush even without thinking why they should or should not. They deserve to know why we are pissed off at them for their stupidity and lack of vision. In short, we need a leader with vision (John Kennedy was one), and Ralph Nader is another.
Posted by: Tim Cash at November 3, 2004 08:13 AMThe baby boom generation unfortunately contains a large proportion who think it's cool to be anti-Bush because it was cool to be anti-Nixon in 1973. They never got out of that mode, the only people they discuss issues with are of the same mindset, and they were never trained to think about both sides of an issue.
The "question authority" bumper stickers say it all. The same people who nod their heads or pump their fists when they see one of these will look the other way if the "authority" is the MSM.
Posted by: zip at March 21, 2005 02:08 AM