WB: Chameleon – Moon of Alabama

July 6, 2006

WB: Chameleon

Billmon:

[I]t looks like someone in the White House propaganda department has figured out that Bush is no longer a credible salesman for his own war. He badly needs product endorsements — and who better to give them than the men and women at his back, standing silently where they were ordered to stand?

Chameleon

Posted by b on July 6, 2006 at 05:23 UTC | Permalink

Comments

This picture , including Iron Mike, is even more psychotic.
WaPo:

Bush flew to this Army base to spend part of the holiday with U.S. troops and to rhetorically link the nation’s current conflicts with its storied origin — “from Bunker Hill to Baghdad, from Concord to Kabul,” as he put it.
…
The picture this time was carefully drawn. Appearing in an olive shirt drenched with sweat, Bush spoke in front of scores of troops in camouflage uniforms and red berets, a massive U.S. flag and a 27-foot sculpture of a World War II airborne trooper known by the nickname “Iron Mike.”
…
[Later that day:] Doffing the sweat-soaked shirt from Fort Bragg, Bush showed up in the East Room in a red-and-white short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt and slacks.

Posted by: b | Jul 6 2006 5:30 utc | 1

Another interesting thing, following Billmons observation, is that because such presentations are so often photographed as a still image, its probably not coincidental that the still image as a whole reads as a classical religious icon. As in a Russian Orthodox Icon, where The image of Jesus reads as being physically larger than the other people in the picture, who read as descending in size according to importance. Like here.

Posted by: anna missed | Jul 6 2006 5:59 utc | 2

A lot of people don’t know this, but if you stare at the Ft. Bragg pic long enough, you see a 3-D mushroom cloud.

Posted by: NIght Owl | Jul 6 2006 6:35 utc | 3

b, Barkeep has updated his post referencing your image of codpiece.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 6 2006 8:36 utc | 4

Look at the little fellow’s hands in the first Ft Bragg pic. They are so white and clean. He has been scrubbing them with lye or somesuch, desperately trying to wash the blood off.
I’m scared we’re about to be found out.
It won’t be long now, because as fast as technology moves it doesn’t move fast enough for Dubya’s deteriorating psyche.
2004 electioneering used a digital spinal implant. This enabled the BushCo team to fire the messages directly to the ‘black box’ under his jacket, from whence they would be sent via the tap straight into his central nervous system and up to the cerebal cortex. A small dose of batrachotoxin from Dendrobates pumilio the the strawberry poison dart frog turns down Dubya’s own already low affect, self initiated actions, rather like a rheostat on a bass crossover. This then allows any independent thoughts and actions to be superceeded by those being pumped out of the digital spinal implant.
Now that was fine when Dubya’s thoughts and actions originated at such a low affect. He had developed considerable tolerance to his “strawbeery frog surprise’ but we were just coping.
However if he has picked up a compulsive behaviour of washing his hands, he would have to be stuffed so full of strawberry frogs that the executive branch could all be indicted for contributing to the extinction of an endangered species.
Even then it’s unlikely that the digitised control streaming can penetrate the tiny nub of sentience that remains.
The normal treatment for compulsive behaviours of this magnitude is electroconvulsive therapy more commonly known as shock treatment.
However some of those in the media perception team (MPD) of Whitehouse Executive Control One claim that their pets may become restless at the sight of Dubya making continuous handwashing motions at any mention of Iraq, especially if the handwashing is followed by a sudden stiffening, as rigid as a rebar, as a precursor to vibrating at 50 cycles and foaming at the mouth. The latter as the ECT comes into peak mode.
MPT reckon that the press gallery may use the image to illustrate how firm the president is in his committment to stay the course and loop it through the teasers and precis all night.
Chickenshit journalists as they are, MPT worry that some colleague of Al Hubbard, already familiar with the techniques, may recognise the condition and put two and two together.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 6 2006 10:58 utc | 5

The giant bronze reminds me both of the clumsy military art of the third reich and the clumsy art of Rameside period of Egypt. It stinks of imperial conquest and empire building.
Nothing is by accident. Hitler practiced every movement and mulled over every word for each speech his propaganda master wrote. The Shrub is no different. And of course, the Rovians block out every move, right down to the clapping Republican morons at the State of the Disunion Speech. Smoke and Mirrors is all is it takes to keep the dull witted emotionally bonded.

Posted by: Diogenes | Jul 6 2006 13:24 utc | 6

Polo shirt?
I always thought these were polo shirts.
A shit in any shirt.

Posted by: Hamburger | Jul 6 2006 15:41 utc | 7

And snake in the grass. Leakers, schmeakers. The emperor will smear as he pleases.

President George Bush directed his vice-president, Dick Cheney, to take personal charge of a campaign to discredit a former ambassador who had accused the administration of twisting prewar intelligence on Iraq, it emerged yesterday.
The revelation by the National Journal, a respected weekly political magazine, that Mr Bush took a personal interest in countering damaging allegations by the former ambassador, Joe Wilson, reveals a White House that was extraordinarily sensitive to any criticism of its prewar planning. …
The Journal said Mr Bush made the admission in a July 24 2004 interview in the Oval Office with the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, who is leading the investigation into the outing of the CIA agent, Valerie Plame….
According to the National Journal, Mr Bush told prosecutors he directed Mr Cheney to disclose classified information both to defend his administration and to discredit Mr Wilson.

Posted by: catlady | Jul 6 2006 17:41 utc | 8

On Hats
The color of the shirt must have been deliberate.
However it fails; it was a mistake.
Making Bush blend in in that way (ignoring the statue), making him out to be the commander or the front man or top boss or whatever is negated by the lack of headgear.
Hats are very important, see English royalty, and history in general.
The soldiers all belong to a ‘corps’ but that Bush does not belong is made clear by his bare head. He is an outsider, and his position behind the lectern, adorned with an emblem, front stage, but not higher up in feet, does not compensate for that lack. Mind you the ‘low’ position in feet or meters is a constant today, it is somehow considered cool, matey and democratic … (Segolène Royal is getting mileage out of it.)
Hats in the old world (EU 1920, say) were symbols of class. The top hat, the bowler, the cap, to mention one steretoypical example.
With the rise in kudos of the markers of classlessness, hats for men were abandoned, vestiges persist today for women (Queens, Victoria Beckham as borowing, etc.) Signalling your position or class or origins by a hat became, well, old hat. Just as accent could no longer really matter.
Nevertheless, some institutions continued the HAT as a sign of belonging to a particular group, decked out is standard gear, part of uniform, with the hat having traditional, symbolic, but also pratical justifications. These groups were in the main masculine, professional, and agressive. This brought some head gear back into fashion (baseball cap, worn by Swedish three-year-olds and Islamic militants, but not by women except those who want to mark masculinity.)
In a fractioned society, old marker are taken up and all groups who can exploit the HAT will. And all over the EU, btw, there is a definite move towards uniforms, be it for school children or immigrant workers who clean toilets. Many include hats, sometimes only for ceremonial occasions, often as a professional badge (surgeons, green; cleaners, white plastic, soldiers, never bare headed, etc. etc.) The uniform confers some group belonging, some statement that the person is not alone, and the HAT is the first sign. People look at faces and notice hats. There is also of course the terrorist hat – a mask or covering of the face – exploited to death by the mainstream media.
But how could Bush wear a hat or any other headgear?
Impossible.
A hovering halo, maybe. But something on his head – no. There is no code.
And yet his hatlessness puts him in an inferior position to the soldiers behind him. Today. You can’t have your fascim light and obey old codes. At some point something has to crack. Mind you, Hitler managed without a hat – different times.
Of course the idea is that Bush must present an image that mainstream America (no hats, except the sporty or functional or jokey type) can identify with. But so much blah about supporting the troops – their image as clean decked out men, high in honor and spit and polish, including the short hair and HAT, finally does him in! He belongs, or pretends to belong (shirt) but doesn’t really (hat).
😉

Posted by: Noirette | Jul 6 2006 18:05 utc | 9

“Iron Mike” looks like he’s about to step on bush like a bug. strangeness.
the nytimes did a piece a while back about the hollywood p.r. folks who manufactured Bush’s image.
mount bushmore
scroll down to images of blessed bush.
..russian icon, on the right hand of jesus, my sweet lord… of course, the other side of that religious iconography is forever burned into memory.
“A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection – not an invitation for hypnosis.” – Umberto Eco

Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 6 2006 18:24 utc | 10

@catlady
thanks, but what I can’t understand is a year later, we have no press conf no new indictments, no new charges, nothing…what is fitz waiting for?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 6 2006 20:02 utc | 11

Here’s the original National Journal article, instead of the Common Dreams reprint of the Guardian’s coverage.

But Bush told investigators that he was unaware that Cheney had directed I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff, to covertly leak the classified information to the media instead of releasing it to the public after undergoing the formal governmental declassification processes.
Bush also said during his interview with prosecutors that he had never directed anyone to disclose the identity of then-covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, Wilson’s wife. Bush said he had no information that Cheney had disclosed Plame’s identity or directed anyone else to do so.

All Bush wanted was to “get it out”–the classified information that he declassified with those three simple words according to Addington–that the CIA had given him FUBARed intelligence on yellowcake. If Ronnie was teflon, the Boy King is pure antigrav.

Posted by: catlady | Jul 6 2006 20:38 utc | 12

“Iron Mike” looks to me like he’s sneaking through the crowd in order to jam that bayonet up Bush’s ass. Could be just me though 🙂

Posted by: PeeDee | Jul 6 2006 21:46 utc | 13

And the hand washing discussion is vividly reminding me of the recent Howard Hughes cameo “Aviator“. Clearly one’s psyche can literally come apart, and I think Hughes started with much stronger foundations.

Posted by: PeeDee | Jul 6 2006 21:52 utc | 14

PeeDee- Howard Hughes and Michael Jackson are the best advertisements for an estate tax, and a graduated income tax in the world.
having too much money seems to be as soul deforming as not having enough. both make money the central issue of your life, too often.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 6 2006 22:19 utc | 15

People who are interested in Bush stagecraft should check out Greg Allen’s series of posts re Sforzian backgrounds (start way at the bottom with this one). I’ll admit to being fascinated by the backgrounds as well – such a great shorthand for this Administration’s obsession with style over substance.
Great post as always, Billmon.

Posted by: shinypenny | Jul 7 2006 3:17 utc | 16

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