THE BUSH SHOW

by Michael Renz

Like Truman Burbank, the Jim Carrey character who led his life in a world created for him behind a camera, our President leads a similar life. Truman learns he's been living a lie in the end and enters the real world. The question is, is this president truly oblivious to his surroundings? Will he too walk through that door and learn his "mandate" doesn't exist? That he is not embraced by all? Or is this a world of his choosing? After all, the man doesn't read the newspaper. He gets the news that's fed to him by his "handlers."

Does he know people protest against his policies? When he makes appearances, protesters are directed to a "safe zone" where they cannot harm the president. This is done for "security reasons."
A group planning to protest President Bush at a speech at a Nebraska plastics plant will be located more than half a mile away from the president's location. The group informed the secret service of their intent to protest and were assigned their designated spot far from the president's eyes. In spite of their willingness to go through the same security required of the supportive attendees, they're required to forfeit their right to free speech or go where the president can't see you. Again I wonder if the isolation is by choice or necessity.
If you bypass permission of the secret service and position yourself where the president may actually see you, you'll be quickly arrested. Take the case of Nicole and Jeff Rank of Corpus Christi, Texas. They dared to reveal their anti-Bush T-shirts at a rally in West Virginia, where they were arrested by local authorities acting on the orders of the Secret Service. Charleston Municipal Judge Carole Bloom later dismissed the charges. Supporters, however, can get as close as they want. It doesn't take a genious to figure out that if you wished to do the president harm you need only wave a sign supporting him to get close. The secret service presumes that terrorists or assassins would naturally have anti-Bush signage.
We've all heard the story of Kerry-Edwards supporters being denied access to Bush rallies across the country last year. Is it because they party did not want disenters present or that they simply did not want their president to know there were those of differing opinions. Taking it even a step further, at a Rio Rancho, New Mexico Dick Cheney rally, procuring a ticket required signing an endorsement of the Bush/Cheney ticket! I can hear his handlers saying "look Mr. President, see how the people love you!"
At Bush's Washington town hall meeting to discuss his social security reform ideas, (in absolutely no detail) we learned that the audience was made up of "hand-picked" Bush supporters, asking some very "un-tough" questions, that had surely been scripted by his team. I wonder, is this president kept in the dark or simply afraid of confrontation?
Now we learn of journalists are being either paid or propped up by the administration in an effort to bolster the president's programs and further the president's agenda. This is an obvious attempt to covertly influence public opinion and we should be very afraid. First this administration takes away your right to free speech and follows it by subtly changing the way you hear the news. Here's how it works. The President, bent on changing social security claims that the system will be paying out more than it takes in by the year 2042. Now that the statement's been made the administration scrambles to find, establish, or even create the facts that support the claim. Once the "facts" are out there, they put some journalists on the payroll to support the ideas, or plant 'credentialed" reporters to ask the right questions in an effort to garner public support. That's the pattern emerging here, and this manipulation of the "truth" and attempts to squash those that would refute it are not the exception, but as we will soon see, the norm.
The question I keep asking myself is: Is the president aware of these goings on or does he live in a cocoon created by his handlers who create the world around him and feed him only what he needs to see and hear? Is he the ultimate puppet dictator or a man who is afraid to confront his adversaries?