And did the kids ever lap it up. Taking a break from kneeling at his Reagan shrine, Jonah Goldberg wrote "I think this will probably be the most historic inaugural since at least Kennedy's and perhaps FDR's first or fourth."
Committing yet more violence against actual history, Victor Davis Hanson declares that "this is the first time that an American president has committed the United States to side with democratic reformers worldwide."
The first time? Not really.
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge--and more.
Sorry, Vic.
As always, Jon Stewart offered a concise and devastating review of Bush's speech: "This offer not valid in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan..."
And, as if to confirm Stewart's analysis and repudiate Hanson's and Goldberg's fluffery, in the days after the speech various members of the Bush circle, including Bush's own father, stressed that it was just a speech.
White House officials said in interviews Friday that Bush was not signaling a shift in policy but rather seeking to clarify what administration officials call the "Bush doctrine of liberty" that the president feels should guide policy well after he leaves the White House. The president's father reinforced that message yesterday.
Some have excused the speech's reach, suggesting that inaugurals are supposed to be rhetorically excessive. I can see that to a point, but I think it's not too much to expect that a president evince some measure of comprehension of the details and ramifications of his grand initiatives. Bush never has, and I doubt ever will. His references to freedom are pure kitsch. They contain no genuine intent, and are meant merely to make Americans feel good about being Americans, and about having George W. Bush as their president.
From Denis Dutton's review of Tomas Kulka's Kitsch and Art:
At the center of Kulka’s argument are three criteria, “necessary and sufficient conditions,” for kitsch in visual arts. First, “kitsch depicts objects or themes that are highly charged with stock emotions.” A little girl, holding a puppy, with big tears rolling from her eyes (and aren’t those eyes the size of grapefruits!). Sad clowns, mothers with infants, cute, baby animals (mainly mammals), cheerful hobos, Swiss Alpine scenes with lovely, blond Swiss girls in folk dress, dolphins sporting in the water, and so on. Second, the subject of kitsch must be “instantly and effortlessly identifiable.” No visual ambiguity: the audience must never have to strain to recognize what is depicted. Finally, a purely negative condition: kitsch does nothing “to enrich our associations relating to the depicted objects or themes.”
For Kulka, kitsch is essentially transparent: the audience for kitsch is not focused on the formal or technical features of the work as art, but looks through the kitsch work to a subject-matter, normally something sentimental or morally edifying. The self-consciousness of the appeal of the kitsch subject is also important, Kulka indicates, echoing Milan Kundera’s notion of the second tear. “Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession,” Kundera has written. “The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass. The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! The second tear makes kitsch kitsch.” There is a sense of self-congratulation in that second tear, but also an enjoyment of the fact of universality. So when Bambi appears on screen, and everyone sighs, “Awaaah,” part of the appeal of the event is the recognition that everybody’s awaahing at the same time. “Since the purpose of kitsch,” Kulka says, “is to please the greatest possible number of people, it always plays on the most common denominators.”
Bush's references to freedom exemplify Kundera's 'second tear': "How nice to be moved, together with all America, by the concept of freedom!"
Kitsch in art is merely a turn off. Kitsch in politics, because politics is obviously of more immediate consequence, is somewhat more wretched. George W. Bush's presidency has been defined by it.
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