The Passion of the Bush
Since it’s Sunday, let’s turn our attention to the right wing of the Christian faith.
Frank Rich, at the New York Times writes about the the DVD being released to “counter” the DVD release of Fahrenheit 911. 300,000 copies of George W. Bush: Faith in the White House will be distributed free to churches, but Rich calls this a must-see for all of us.
More than any other campaign artifact, it clarifies the hard-knuckles rationale of the president’s vote-for-me-or-face-Armageddon re-election message. It transforms the president that the Democrats deride as a “fortunate son” of privilege into a prodigal son with the “moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet.” Its Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God’s essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth. The stations of his cross are burnished into cinematic fable: the misspent youth, the hard drinking (a thirst that came from “a throat full of Texas dust”), the fateful 40th-birthday hangover in Colorado Springs, the walk on the beach with Billy Graham.
… As for the actual president, he is shown with a flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message isn’t subtle: they were separated at birth.
Rich makes the connection between the 17 percent of Americans who believe the world will end in their lifetimes and the Republican base. It’s these people who will go out and work the hardest to ensure Bush’s re-election. This DVD is specifically for them.
Purporting to be an independent group, a cabal of the usual suspects is behind this effort, including Deal Hudson, who recently had to resign as a Bush-Cheney Catholic advisor after The Catholic Reporter detailed his firing from Fordham University due to sexual harassment charges. (It’s actually worse than that–read the story.) Hudson, of course, is the man who told the Washington Post that Kerry should be “denounced from the pulpit.”
I’m not really sure I can stomach watching something like this, but Rich insists:
“George W. Bush: Faith in the White House” must be seen because it shows how someone like General Boykin can stay in his job even in failure and why Mr. Bush feels divinely entitled to keep his job even as we stand on the cusp of an abyss in Iraq. In this pious but not humble worldview, faith, or at least a certain brand of it, counts more than competence, and a biblical mission, or at least a simplistic, blunderbuss facsimile of one, counts more than the secular goal of waging an effective, focused battle against an enemy as elusive and cunning as terrorists.
Order yours now. Or wait for the bootleg copy.
October 3rd, 2004 at 3:19 pm
What am I missing? Churches get their tax-exempt status, at least in part, by _not_ engaging in politics. Is this the lever I’d been waiting for? Can we challenge the tax-exemptness of churches altogether? Let’s hope he gives it to most of them…
George Bush is the man!
October 4th, 2004 at 8:18 am
The market is swarming with Bush-related DVDs. If you want to see something provocative but well-researched find Greg Palast’s BUSH FAMILY FORTUNES. Available on DVD as of last week.
October 6th, 2004 at 10:52 pm
My favorite prayer “Lord, We beseech Thee to save us from pious men”