January 13, 2005
Media Influence on 2004 U.S. Elections
American Idol, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake—each of these catch phrases have in some way or form, impacted public opinion in the last few years with the advent of reality shows and constant change in pop culture. Whether it connote a positive or negative image, each American’s eyes or ears have stumbled across these poster-child faces or television programs on at least one haphazard occasion. Such facts lead us to question the powerful influence that lies in the hands of the media, and what possible effects media coverage may have on something as trivial as pop culture, to something as important as the next President of the United States. Whatever the case may be, we have all been able to make some kind of communal reference point to such images as the media, either consciously or subconsciously, accentuating the large influence the media has on the American public.
The media has long played a large role in influencing public opinion. It is not shocking that the 2004 U.S. elections were no different in its catalyst effect in swaying the public. An even deeper rooted question one must pose however, beyond the obvious effects the media has on public opinion, is precisely how the media is able to convince such large masses in either voting for or against certain engrained political party inclinations. The subtleties in molding public opinion can sometimes be so slight that those involved are not even aware of the influence enfolding.
The rally of American patriotism, first after George Bush, Sr., during the Vietnam War, and now with George W. Bush, Jr., in the ongoing Iraq War, the American public seems almost handicapped in sidestepping media coverage of presidential campaign agendas on foreign policy issues. News briefs in the New York Times and Newsweek Magazine alike cannot rid themselves of articles recounting the most horrid conditions of war for young American soldiers on the battlefields today, while CNN, Fox News, and NPR, detail the remainder of such dreary stories. Many times, the general public is unaware of the degree to which such images may effect the common viewer, resulting in an apathy that all too often distinguishes the youthful child from the desensitized parent. The great extent to which media has played a role in affecting the public has been seen time and again, not only with war coverage, but with election coverage as well. Unfortunately, the vast American public seems to act no differently in situations that seem quite pressing, such as the next Democratic or Republican President, as the media undeniably plays a large role in molding American public opinion and therefore, voter turnout in many respects.
However, it is interesting to note that reports which date back to January 2000 show that the percentage of campaign news and coverage actually fell “9% for daily newspapers, 10% for network news and 5% for news abroad.” At the same time, there was a slow climb of “4%, for cable news, the Internet and comedy TV shows,” in terms of average campaign coverage (11/13/2004: “US elections and media influence.” http://www.netlexfrance.com/weblogs/index.php?p=21407)
In attempts to make sense of such statistics, it appears as if the general public has proven to change with time, becoming more disinterested with American politics, in the thick of the ongoing election campaign. This has resulted in more regular attempts to cover election updates through other mediums by the media, particularly through comedy and late night humor.
Perhaps the American public has opted out of traditional forms of media when it comes to election coverage as it tries to find another way to make light of the present situation at hand. I find it personally disturbing to see the American public turn towards the funnies first, rather than try to understand the American politik. Though the media has always played a large role in determining the outcome of candidate information during election season, perhaps a more serious attitude towards the matter would make others abroad view the U.S. elections with less skepticism and more faith in its choices taken in determining the future of America.
Posted by Stephanie Marie Lowe at 2:37 AM
December 6, 2004
We Are Ugly from Overseas - American criticism
I feel like so often, we see these older, well-established journalism giants in the U.S. making all sorts of criticisms and diagnoses. However, the media entity as a whole in the United States is what has perpetrated the leniency allowed to the White House and other establishments. These establishments have a responsibility to be forthcoming, in the interest of democracy, and the press should force them to do it. The founders of this country - among them Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln - made a seemingly clear and inexorable link between the concept of "democracy," and a free press that gives the citizen clear information with which to make a decision.
So why has this country abandoned its founding principles?
With American's abandonment of the principles of its democracy, and the government allowed to run rampant on its agenda of world-domination, the U.S. has come to look quite unattractive to the countries it reluctantly shares the world with.
And Morley Safer points some fingers at the media.
He and Osborn Elliott met Sunday at the Stonington, CT community center and spoke out about what's wrong with the media. Shafer talked about what it was like for him to go to Europe and watch the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.
He said that both parties were boastful and egocentric, seeming not to know or care that the whole world was watching the broadcast of their speeches, not only Americans.
From this article in New London, CT's The Day newspaper:
Safer, who covered the Vietnam war for CBS News, said the American press has not done enough to convey the image this country has around the world. He watched the political conventions this summer from Europe and said he cringed at the “awful bravado” he heard in speeches from members of both parties.
He said the candidates seemed little aware that their conventions were broadcast around the world. By taking two minutes to acknowledge the international audience, Safer said, the candidates could have dispelled the air of superiority they emitted with their exhortation, “God bless America,” a statement that he said seemed to be code for “God bless us and screw you.”
“This country looks arrogant, foolish and scary from overseas,” said Safer, who has a weekend home in Chester.
So then, Morley, the press has some responsibility to why they "ALLOW" their politicians to make mistakes, embarass their country, inflict violence on other countries, and end up hated? Should the people who perpetrate these actions be responsible?
Is it the government not cooperating with the media, or the media not upholding their responsibility of furious questioning to get the right information to its audience?
Two Veteran Journalists Critical of Today's Media Coverage: The Day, New London, Connecticut
Two Veteran Journalists Critical Of Today's Media Coverage
Objectivity Seen As False Ideal That Hampers Reporters' Work
By KATE MORAN
Day Staff Writer, New London
Published on 12/6/2004
Stonington — What is the state of journalism in this country when the national press, historically disparaged as the “liberal media,” gets pilloried by both the right and the left for its flabby coverage of politics and the war in Iraq?
Morley Safer and Osborn Elliott, two doyens of the news business, met at the community center Sunday night for a conversation in which they questioned why reporters cling to a false ideal of objectivity that prevents them from being critical and skeptical purveyors of the news.
In a talk sponsored by the Stonington Free Library, the two colleagues and old friends discussed how to fortify coverage in an era when news outlets are so obsessed with being even-handed that their stories take the shape of point-counterpoint rather than an incisive examination of an issue.
“We've heard a lot of criticism of the election coverage — or non-coverage — by the right and the left alike,” said Elliott, the Stonington Borough resident and former editor of Newsweek.
Elliot criticized the press for not sufficiently challenging the Bush administration's hyperbolic claims about the weapons threat in Iraq. Condoleezza Rice, he said, was able to peddle fear that the “smoking gun” in Iraq could be a “mushroom cloud.”
Safer, an editor and correspondent for “60 Minutes” for three decades, perceived that reporters had soaked up the mood of cautiousness and deference to the White House that he said infected Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Even for those reporters inclined to be critical, Safer said, disproving the Bush administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction was a nearly impossible task. Safer said the president could assert the danger in Iraq but that the press had little means to investigate such a claim outside “the best testimony of weapons inspectors.”
As Safer sees it, news outlets have lost credibility in part because readers do not associate them with a human face, of the kind that Katharine Graham of The Washington Post presented to the world during the Watergate era. Increasingly, he noted, the media are owned and controlled by sprawling corporations, such as Viacom, Disney and General Electric.
The two journalists were particularly harsh in their criticism of Rupert Murdoch, the media baron they faulted for focusing on profit at the expense of good journalism.
Murdoch's preoccupation with the bottom line is symptomatic of what Safer and Elliott said afflicts news corporations as a whole. With the cost of keeping correspondents abroad, they said, coverage of international affairs can get short shrift.
“It's why we're the most ill-informed nation about the rest of the world,” Safer said.
Safer, who covered the Vietnam war for CBS News, said the American press has not done enough to convey the image this country has around the world. He watched the political conventions this summer from Europe and said he cringed at the “awful bravado” he heard in speeches from members of both parties.
He said the candidates seemed little aware that their conventions were broadcast around the world. By taking two minutes to acknowledge the international audience, Safer said, the candidates could have dispelled the air of superiority they emitted with their exhortation, “God bless America,” a statement that he said seemed to be code for “God bless us and screw you.”
“This country looks arrogant, foolish and scary from overseas,” said Safer, who has a weekend home in Chester.
Safer criticized the press for turning election coverage into a “beauty contest” in a year when reporters had vowed to focus on substantive issues. He was frustrated that the press collectively branded John Kerry “boring and lugubrious” when discussion never should have turned on questions of personality.
Yet Safer, who wore his liberal leanings on his sleeve, also faulted Kerry for failing to convey a coherent message and a strong sense of conviction. He said this lack of a compass was partly the legacy of Bill Clinton, the president who succeeded by “co-opting the Republican agenda” and leaving his own party “in disarray” with nothing to stand for.
Both Safer and Elliott praised the correspondents who have toiled in deadly conditions in Iraq to file vivid stories about the war.
Safer said covering Vietnam was a “cakewalk” by comparison. During that war, he felt safe walking through villages known to be hotbeds of the Viet Cong resistance. While reporters had virtually unlimited access in Vietnam, “hitchhiking” across the country on military helicopters, Safer said correspondents in Iraq have to dive on the floor of their cars while drivers navigate war-torn streets.
While Safer had reservations about “embedding” correspondents in military units, a practice new to the Iraq war that he said restricts a reporter's perspective, he conceded that there are few other ways to travel somewhat safely in a country teeming with violence.
To groans from the audience, Safer said he thinks the situation in Iraq will continue to deteriorate.
“This war is going to be more of a lingering disease than Vietnam,” he said. “I do not see any resolution.”
Posted by Lubna Takruri at 1:54 PM
November 1, 2004
Correspondent based in Germany sees (only one) dark cloud looming
Richard Bernstein wrote in Friday's New York Times that regardless of who wins tomorrow, Europe is starting to feel the pressure of making friends with America again. The article presents some good quotes and thinking by European politicians and intellectuals over Iraq, but almost completely ignores the other issues raised by German press in recent weeks, for example the coming storm over free trade. This seems to be a little myopic, seeing the issue through an American lens instead of a pan-European one, with all of the relevant facets of an important but troubled relationship.
New York Times - Many in Europe See U.S. Vote as a Lose-Lose Affair
October 29, 2004
Many in Europe See U.S. Vote as a Lose-Lose Affair
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
BERLIN, Oct. 28 - No matter who wins the presidential election next week, the consequences for American-European relations will be bad, according to a deeply pessimistic view taking hold here.
If President Bush wins, the reasoning goes, pro-Kerry Europe will be astonished at what it will see as the bad judgment of the American electorate. Europeans will be confirmed in their sense that they are from Earth and Americans from some other planet.
But if Senator John Kerry wins, the result may well be an almost immediate trans-Atlantic crisis. Mr. Kerry, having presented himself in the campaign as the man who can restore a functioning alliance, will ask Germany and France to come to the aid of the United States in Iraq. Germany and France will refuse, and Americans will feel angry and betrayed.
"If they were to say no to Kerry, the risk of a backlash against Europe in America would be large," said William Drozdiak, the director of the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Center. "Americans would say, 'We can't depend on Europe, even though we protected Europe for 50 years.' It will cause lasting damage to the relationship, a great sense of disillusionment."
It is a strangely paradoxical reasoning, but the very fact that it may be accurate has led some foreign policy thinkers in Europe to a new sense of urgency about the world's most important alliance.
The animating idea here is that whoever is elected, the future of the world depends on a continuation of healthy relations between America and Europe and a common appreciation of the bedrock values of their alliance. To effect a reconciliation, the thinking goes, European leaders have to show a willingness to take some political risk, while the United States has to stop seeing the development of Europe as a threat to its interests.
"We should want every country in Europe to have a relationship with the United States as close as ours," the British historian and essayist Timothy Garton Ash writes in his sparkling new book, "Free World."
Britain and France in particular, he writes, need to overcome their narcissism of small differences, nurtured by centuries of rivalry and competition, and join hands in a "consistently Euro-Atlanticist" partnership with the United States that can keep the collective eye on the big picture. The big picture is knowing that only by working together can Europe and the United States achieve the common objective of enhancing democratic values in the parts of the world where they do not yet exist.
It is a good thought, and good advice, but how to overcome the immediate barrier, the difference over Iraq, which is by no stretch of the imagination a small one? There are some good ideas in that area too - some draft compromise formulas, one requirement of which is that neither the American nor the European side expect the other to make all of the important gestures.
In a formula devised by Michael Naumann, the former German culture minister who is now the editor of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, Europe will come to the aid of the United States in Iraq if the United States can fulfill four conditions:
¶That in the aftermath of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, it reaffirms its commitment to the Geneva Convention's rules on the treatment of prisoners.
¶That it recommits itself to nuclear nonproliferation at home, reducing its own weapons stockpiles and not just preventing countries like North Korea and Iran from obtaining them.
¶That it enters into serious ecological discussions, including the Kyoto treaty on global warming, which was rejected by the Bush administration.
¶That there be what Mr. Naumann calls "a return to a less arrogant tone of conversation," meaning that leaders on both sides of the Atlantic need to desist from the demagogic posturing of past months.
This last point presumably means there should be no warnings about "countries like France" from the president of the United States, and no talk of a "multipolar world" - code meaning that American power is a danger and needs to be contained - from the president of France.
In return, France and Germany have to find a way to help the country that saved Europe in two hot wars and one cold one in the last century and that now finds itself militarily and diplomatically isolated in a violent conflict in Iraq.
One way, proposed by Mr. Naumann, would be to get serious about the long-proposed but still mostly unbuilt European military rapid reaction force and to deploy some of its detachments to places like Falluja and Sadr City.
Given the intransigent and politically popular refusals by Germany and France to commit troops to Iraq, it might seem highly unlikely that either country could fulfill that part of the prospective bargain. And yet, in Germany at least, there have been some small signs that exactly such a gesture is being contemplated.
The hint was dropped a few weeks ago by Defense Minister Peter Struck, when he said, essentially, that there is never a never in politics and that under the right circumstances Germany might, after all, send troops to Iraq.
Mr. Struck's comment was immediately disavowed by spokesmen for Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who affirmed that there was no change in Germany's policy.
Still, sending units of a European rapid reaction force to Iraq would have several benefits. It would give Germany a European cover to change its position, and if Germany changed its position, the pressure on France to do the same would be intense.
It would have the added benefit of getting European leaders to take seriously their own pledge to build an independent European force. And it would demonstrate to Americans that such a force would not be part of some effort to weaken NATO and counterbalance the United States.
Most important, it might help ensure a stable, nonterrorist, possibly even somewhat more democratic Middle East, a place where Europe and America have an urgent immediate interest: to avoid chaos and the sort of political extremism that arises from it.
Posted by Lauren Hertel at 9:58 PM
October 27, 2004
International world does not respect Bush
In a Letter to the Editor published in the Opinion section of Berkeley's student-run Daily Californian, Nicolas Sauveur, a Belgian citizen, comments on the lack of international respect for President Bush and his administration.
The author notes the increasing global disapproval of George Bush, even in traditional ally countries like Britain and Australia. He cites a poll that concluded that more than 60% of British surveyed did not like Bush, and another in South Korea that declared that 72% of the population had "negative feelings" towards the US president. Sauveur admits that "American elections should not be a popularity contest abroad", but believes that "when one of America's main problems, terrorism, comes from the outside world, it is irresponsible to stay blind to the world."
The Daily Californian - International World Does Not Respect Bush
International World Does Not Respect Bush
I am not American, nor do I live in America. But having lived in America for 5 years, I know that it ought to be respected and appreciated in the world. Polls released last week couldn't be clearer. Even in ally countries Australia, Britain, Japan and South Korea, a majority share contempt for the Bush administration. More than 60 percent of British polled say they do not like Mr. Bush. In South Korea, where the U.S. fall in the hearts and minds started with George Bush's presidency, 72 percent have negative feelings towards Bush. Bush might be a great leader for Americans, but when it comes to dealing with the world, he is a disaster.
Of course, American elections should not be a popularity contest abroad. But when one of America's main problems, terrorism, comes from the outside world, it is irresponsible to stay blind to the world.
I understand that you don't want to be told by the world how to vote. Don't do it for us. Do it for you. You can not be safe if you only have enemies. There is a smarter way to be tough, resolved, and to protect your country. You deserve to be respected, appreciated and safe. It will never happen under George Bush.
Nicolas Sauveur
Liege, Belgium
Posted by Lena Malcolm at 11:06 AM
October 25, 2004
New Citizens Answer Election's Call
This isn't exactly US media looking outside-- it's US media looking at outsiders on the inside. An article in the New York Times last week took a mostly anecdotal look at how new US citizens in Queens, New York, will be voting in the upcoming election. While there were no great surprises, mostly because the article touches on lots of people only briefly, there was one startling fact:
Nationally, newly naturalized citizens accounted for more than half the net growth in persons registered to vote between 1996 and 2000, according to a new report by the Immigration Policy Center, a research organization affiliated with groups that have supported easing restrictions on legal immigration. But out of 10.7 million adult new citizens in the United States in 2000, only 6.2 million were registered to vote and 5.4 million actually voted, the report said.
The insertion of the word "but" makes this 5.4 million sound small. Actually, the report goes on to say, although new citizens in general have lower rates of voter turnout than natives, new citizens who are registered to vote have higher rates of voter turnout than natives who are registered to vote.
And some immigrants who cannot vote feel so strongly about the election that they are organizing others who can to use their voices to influence immigration policy and other key issues.
Immigration Policy Center report
October 21, 2004
New Citizens Answer Election's Call
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Nicholas Christos slathered more sauce on an order of souvlaki and gestured from his food cart toward the multiethnic throng in front of him on Main Street.
"I'm telling them, I wish they would wake up," he declared. "They better learn more about politics. Ten percent of the people control this country, and the rest are dummies!"
But when Mr. Christos, who left his native Greece decades ago, confessed that he himself had not yet decided which presidential candidate would get his vote, his customers in Flushing, Queens, proved that they were wide awake.
"Better not be Nader!" put in one young man with a flourish of his shish kebab stick.
"That's too close, Kerry and Bush," chimed in Rene Franco, a Colombian immigrant, his mouth still full of hot dog. "Think about immigration policy."
Like Mr. Christos and many of his customers, more than 1.2 million citizens of voting age in New York are foreign born, the last census showed - 27 percent and growing. A recent registration drive by the New York Immigration Coalition signed up 225,000 immigrant voters. But even among those who cannot vote, immigrants and their advocates say, this election has captured their interest like few in memory.
"Everybody's paying attention, trust me!" said Narisha Mohammed, 29, a United States citizen from Trinidad, who stopped to talk about immigrant anxieties on her way to an evening shift at the front desk of the Queens Public Library's Flushing branch.
Her views echoed the assessment of John Mollenkopf, a political scientist at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
"They're diverse, just like native-born voters are diverse," he said of the city's foreign-born residents. "But various immigrant groups, even those that are not Muslim or even South Asian, feel their status is somewhat more precarious in the United States after 9/11.''
That kind of anxiety turned into laughter during an evening of Arab-American stand-up comedy at a Midtown comedy club last week, as Dean Obeidallah and Maysoon Zayid warmed up fans with political humor.
There were cracks like the one about Laura Bush and Teresa Heinz Kerry wearing the same outfit at one of the debates. "Somebody's stylist is going to Guantanamo," Ms. Zayid deadpanned.
Mr. Obeidallah went on to lament the hardships of being Arab-American: African-Americans get Black History Month, he said, and Hispanics get Hispanic Awareness Week. "And what do we get?" he asked plaintively. "Orange Alert."
The evening was part of a four-day Arab-American cultural festival that was held in November last year but was deliberately moved up this year before the election, Mr. Obeidallah said.
"It's not just about selling 700 tickets, it's about organizing the community," he explained, describing himself as a John Kerry supporter. In 2000, he said, American Muslims went overwhelmingly for George W. Bush; this year polls show them swinging to Mr. Kerry.
In some quarters, of course, language or cultural divides make the election seem far away. In a popular Pakistani restaurant in a basement adjacent to a Manhattan mosque on West 29th Street, for example, the patrons and staff showed surprise on Oct. 13 when a visitor asked if the television set would be tuned to the final presidential debate later that evening.
"We only get local channels," one of the servers said, as customers filed in from evening prayers.
"Local channels - local South Asian channels," one of the diners clarified with a smile, pointing out that the old movie playing on the wide-screen television was a Bollywood melodrama.
For many immigrants, however, the presidential debates were simply not to be missed. François Darbouze, 51, a New York cabdriver who lives in New Jersey and hails from Haiti, not only planned to watch the final presidential debate, he also was taping every word.
"Some countries are in trouble and they hardly mention it," he complained, referring to Haiti's latest hardships.
"The father didn't do anything for my country," he added, referring to the first President Bush. "This one, he did not appreciate what Clinton had been doing."
But old world loyalties only go so far, warned Akin Talbi, an Algerian immigrant who is a photographer and drives a pedicab near Times Square for $1 a minute. Mr. Talbi, 38, complained that the imam at his mosque had urged the faithful to vote neither for Mr. Bush nor Mr. Kerry.
"I didn't like it because they're mixing religion and politics," Mr. Talbi said. "Last time they pushed people to vote for Bush. Now they're telling me to vote against Bush."
"Maybe I'm going to vote for Bush," he added in a defiant tone.
Later the same evening, a debate-watching session organized by the Hunter College Israel Public Affairs Committee drew more than 125 with a giant screen, home-baked cookies and "Campaign 2004" T-shirts. Many in the crowd were Jewish immigrants, including Steven Yuniver, 19, the president of the sponsoring group, and Anna Blyakher, 20, the chairwoman.
"I can't vote yet," lamented Ms. Blyakher, who left Ukraine for Brooklyn five years ago. "But I would vote for Bush. Bush is more there for Israel."
Mr. Yuniver, who was 5 when his family moved to New York from Odessa, said he would cast his first vote ever for John Kerry. As red, white and blue light from the screen flickered over the audience, Mr. Yuniver warmed to the theme, citing the need for jobs, universal health care and a different way of dealing with Iraq.
"John Kerry was for the war," he asserted. "But he would have done it the way Clinton got rid of Slobodan Milosevic."
Other immigrant students in the audience were more concerned with policies that shape their own lives.
"What about us?" asked Inez Moran, a 41-year-old freshman from the Dominican Republic, complaining like many immigrants that neither candidate had said enough about immigration policy. "The immigrant now is the one who is suffering. In our family we have a case of someone who lived here 20 years, paid taxes, and he was deported."
Tynisha James, 27, a media major from St. Kitts who become a citizen in 1996, confessed that in the last election she was so ambivalent about the candidates that she did not vote. "I'll be voting for the first time," Ms. James declared after the debate, "and I'm excited."
Nationally, newly naturalized citizens accounted for more than half the net growth in persons registered to vote between 1996 and 2000, according to a new report by the Immigration Policy Center, a research organization affiliated with groups that have supported easing restrictions on legal immigration. But out of 10.7 million adult new citizens in the United States in 2000, only 6.2 million were registered to vote and 5.4 million actually voted, the report said.
On the last stop of the No. 7 train, in the markets along Main Street in Queens, anyone who can speak enough English to voice a political opinion seems ready to offer it these days.
Eunju Jung, from Korea, was no exception. "I don't like Bushie," she said, inadvertently using what Jenna Bush has called her parents' favorite endearment. "From Bushie, every policy is getting worse, is getting very strict."
Some immigrants who cannot vote feel so strongly about the election that they are working as volunteers to get others to the polls. One is Cynthia Neita, 42, a homecare worker and 1199 union activist who has been living out of a suitcase in Ohio since April.
In a telephone interview from Cincinnati, Ms. Neita, a Jamaican who usually lives in New Jersey, said she was so disappointed that her citizenship application was stuck in the Department of Homeland Security naturalization backlog that she volunteered for a union program to register new voters in swing states.
"I'm doing door knocking," she said. "I'm doing registration. I'm doing phone banking. I'm doing outreach in the churches in the black community here. I decided to do this because I wanted to make a difference in somebody's life.”
Posted by Lauren Hertel at 1:25 PM
October 21, 2004
Bush: the worst Mexican President?
George Bush is the worst Mexican President ever, claims one of Mexico’s leading political cartoonists, who argues that in the age of globalization the US President has acquired and mimicked the worst of Mexican political culture.
Rafael Barajas, aka El Fisgón, is considered the "dean of Mexico's vigorous corps of political cartoonists" by the New York Times. In his daily cartoons, the satirical magazines he has founded and his several books he pokes very serious fun at the flawed political system in his country and at the “free-trade empire and incipient world government” led by Bush.
Ironically, writes El Fisgón (which translates as “the snoop”), the US President now resembles a typical cacique, the Mexican strongman who “usually inherits his power from his father”, has “an inclination toward violence”, despises legality and intellectual activity and “declares himself a faithful servant of God”.
The problem, muses El Fisgón, is that Bush has “scaled the heights of Mexican political achievement” at a time when globalization “favors chaos theory”: a butterfly flaps its wings in the jungle and a hurricane is formed in the Caribbean, an American politician acts like a Mexican cacique and war explodes on the other side of the planet.
This piece first appeared at Tomdispatch.com and was reproduced by MotherJones.com
George Bush, The Worst Mexican President Ever
One of Mexico's leading political cartoonists offers, in words, a portrait of our President as viewed from south of the Rio Grande.
El Fisgón
October 13 , 2004
Free-trade globalization has produced some exceedingly strange phenomena: China, the last socialist power, is glad to provide slave labor to multinationals; a firm in India fills the tax forms of an American corporation that produces vodka in Peru and then sells it to Polish immigrants who are constructing a British-financed building in Madrid; an enterprise which specializes in biotechnology tries to copyright the DNA of an isolated tribe from the Amazon, and George Bush has become the worst Mexican president ever.
Globalization tends to blur or erase all economic, geographic, and cultural boundaries, leaving high technology to coexist with primitive forms of exploitation: Taiwan sells watches to the Swiss; Brazil exports technology to Germany; and all evidence suggests that George Bush has stolen his ruling style from old-fashioned Mexican politicians.
Mexican political culture has very defined features and the President of the United States has absorbed them all: The classical Mexican political boss usually inherits his power from his father. The typical Mexican cacique has a love for guns as well as an inclination toward violence and cruelty; he despises legality and intellectual activity, has a personal history of alcoholism and dissipation, lies systematically, and declares himself a faithful servant of God. (Did we miss anything?)
According to Mexican tradition, politicians always reach their positions thanks to a fraudulent electoral process and then surround themselves with a clique which uses its power to conduct "business" on a staggering scale while in office. The Florida electoral thievery and Halliburton's Iraq contract are classic examples of Mexican corruption.
Based on a complex pyramid of political bosses, a totalitarian presidential regime flourished in Mexico. It was organized around a political party whose name remains a monument to paradox: the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI). Names aside, the PRI model was so efficient (for the PRI, of course) that the party was able to hold power for more than seventy years. The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa called it "the perfect dictatorship."
This dictatorship was a mark of shame for all Mexicans. Only Mexico's political cartoonists were able to benefit from it. The profuse manifestations of cynicism and obsequiousness it produced were a delight for us. In the Mexican court, dialogues like the following were not uncommon and completely irresistible:
The President asks: "What time is it?"
His minister replies: "Whatever time you say, Mister President.
Our presidents were almighty creatures, the voices of God on Earth. Not to be with them was to be against them. After them came the final flood or the atomic apocalypse.
In order to maintain its political control, this regime needed to restrain civil rights and limit freedom of the press. While others fell silent, Mexican political bosses, lacking any kind of legal or moral counterweight, spoke with an enviable freedom and without moral scruples, unbounded by reality. They used to say things like: "In the state of Guerrero, the only ones who complain are the poor," referring of course to 98% of the population; or "I can't say yes or no, but quite the opposite."
Undoubtedly, George Bush had these wise men in mind when he insisted that the French weren't able to understand the United States because they didn't have a word for "entrepreneur." Having learned such turns of phrase and so much more from Mexican politicians, he has now scaled the heights of Mexican political achievement, becoming the most notorious cacique of modern times, and he's done this, without paying his predecessors a cent in royalties.
The creation of "free trade democracies" throughout Latin America has been one of the major political triumphs of globalization. It has been said that the election to the presidency of Vicente Fox, a free-trade globalizer if there ever was one, marked the beginning of a new era for Mexico. This put the fear of God into Mexican caricaturists who dreaded the possibility that the fall of the PRI might mean the end of our professional paradise. We shouldn't have worried. Fox has held onto all the old vices of our former political bosses -- except their authority. What he's added to Mexico's presidency has been a touch of marketing and plenty of unintentional humor. He's been like a genetic experiment in which the DNA of an old-style Mexican president has been cloned with Dan Quayle and Jerry Lewis. Free-trade democrats love to find new ways of reducing the size and power of the state. Fox has proved an exemplar when it comes to this. Never has a Mexican government been so weak; never have Washington's decisions carried such unprecedented weight in Mexican life.
Globalization favors chaos theory: a butterfly flaps its wings in the jungle and a hurricane is formed in the Caribbean; in Saudi Arabia, a baby is born with a silver spoon in its mouth, and two towers fall in Manhattan. An American politician acts like a Mexican cacique and war explodes on the other side of the planet.
The only visible advantage Mexican politicians ever offered the rest of us was their limited ability to damage the world. George Bush has overcome this obstacle. After all, he has access to the sort of technology and to an arsenal that Mexico's local tyrants could only dream of. When he says he's blessed, it's because we're damned.
Under the nuclear umbrella of his free-trade empire and incipient world government, his clique of petty political bosses can dictate the economic agendas of dozens of third-world countries. In recent years, the priorities of the Mexican economy have been defined by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Wall Street, and Washington; they establish our oil quota, the levels of our external debt payments, and the minimum wages we can offer. Vincente Fox acts as what he's always been: a Coca Cola CEO, a multinational middleman, while the true president of Mexico is George Bush, that cacique of caciques.
According to Mexican tradition, politicians are judged depending on how they take care of their people and how they make them prosper… and by such standards, George Bush is the worst Mexican President ever.
We are told that American democracy still works, but if so, it's the only aspect of the U.S. that's not globalized; which means millions of citizens around the world won't have the right to vote in this election, even though their futures too are at stake. For Mexicans this a particularly bitter pill to swallow. After all, shouldn't we have a right to express our opinions on the last cacique?
Rafael Barajas (El Fisgón), political cartoonist for the Mexican daily La Jornada, is also the cofounder of two satirical magazines, a children's book illustrator, a winner of Mexico's National Journalism Prize, and the author of La Historia de un País en Caricatura, a book on the history of nineteenth century Mexican political cartoons. He has been dubbed the "dean of Mexico's vigorous corps of political cartoonists" by the New York Times. His comic-book history of capitalism, How to Succeed at Globalization, A Primer for the Roadside Vendor, has just been published in English.
Copyright C2004 El Fisgón
This piece first appeared at Tomdispatch.com.
Posted by Pedro-Enrique Armendares at 9:45 AM