George W. Bush does make you want to shake your head sometimes. Visitors to www.davidcorn.com have been chuckling this Memorial Day weekend about the latest--though unintended--Bush disclosure. Speaking at one of his Orwellian, faux townhall meetings on Social Security in Greece, New York on May 24, Bush said
See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.
I'm no historian of the presidency. but I'm guessing this is the first time in the history of the Republic that a president has publicly acknowledged he was catapulting propaganda at the American public. Hey, Commander in Chief, who's the enemy? Isn't a catapult a weapon? (A weapon of mis-information?) Shouldn't the truth be good enough? And can't it be delivered in a less militaristic fashion? Perhaps by Fedex? Yeah, couldn't the president have just said that sometimes it's realy, really necessary "to kind of Fedex the facts" over and over?
I hope Karl Rove sat him down afterward and explained, "What they say is propaganda. What we say is the truth. Got it?" Putting aside ideology--as fellow blogger Adam McKay has urged in a previous posting--can't we all agree, whether we be liberals or conservatives, that if a president is engaged in a propaganda operation he should know enough not to call it such?
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To find out why the governor of Massachusetts is the Republican Weasel of the Week (in a week in which there was much competition for this honor) or to become informed about the latest White House fib on stem cells, click here.