October 02, 2004
Fighting Back Against the Manipulation of Fear
This is an awfully good short political video: Keeping America Scared.
It pushes back against one of the Bush administration’s most effective and improper tactics. For, instead of taking the FDR line (‘nothing to fear but fear itself’), Bush and his crew have stoked the fires of fear (mixed in with what we used to call ‘waving the bloody shirt’) for political gain.
The video not only shows an affable Bush and a creepy Cheney doing it, but also shows Rudy Guilliani trying too hard and overdoing it, and Laura Bush’s ability to say anything and make it sound OK. There’s also a brief (don’t blink) but very chilling cameo by Hollywood box-office star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Like any piece of politcal argument that takes quotes out of context, there is a way in which this video could be called unfair. But the sheer volume of the repetition it exposes, and the setting in which it happened, shows, I think, that this retaliation is not in fact below the belt.
Posted by Michael : October 2, 2004 10:04 PM | Politics: US: 2004 Election | TechnoLinks
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It!
Always thought that FDR quotation worked very nicely to highlight what a manipulative and self-serving and fundamentally immoral line C-Plus and his crew have taken in exploiting 9/11 for their own political (and in some cases financial) benefit.
It's a little inapt, though: seems like a lot of people think that he was talking about the war, but he was actually talking about the Great Depression.
Posted by: DrBB at October 2, 2004 11:15 PMOk, Ok, how about 'failing to don the Churchillian stiff upper lip'?
Posted by: Michael at October 2, 2004 11:31 PMI loved the "saddamsaddamsaddamsaddamsaddamsaddamsaddamsaddam" part. By the end it sounded like they were saying 'damsa damsa damsa", and it would mean just about as much.
Posted by: Mojo at October 3, 2004 02:09 AMThat was some of the best editing I've ever seen or heard, especially the sound. Sounded just like these guys were reading a comma separated list of the same word over and over, no breaks, no stuttering.
It's like Shakespearean theater, only creepier.
I wonder what would happen if Bush cut his speech down to basics for the
next debate, just looked into the camera and said "Saddam, Saddam, Saddam,
terrorist, terrorist, terrorist, kill, kill, kill. Thank you and God bless America."
Giuliani is an opera lover. That's where his presentation style came from.
Posted by: gmanedit at October 4, 2004 08:15 PM