The Truman Show: Too Close for Comfort?

The Truman Show: Too Close for Comfort?
Why is the Year 1968 So Spooky for Dubya?
Just How Big a Nuclear Threat IS China, Really?

by Tamara Baker

Tuesday, Nov. 16, 1999 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA -- The Truman Show was on TV last Saturday night.

Not having seen it the first around, thanks to heeding the negative verbiage hurled by the critics, I had a chance to see just what all the fuss was about.

And I understood.

For those of you who haven't been in a cave the past few years, The Truman Show concerns a lad named Truman whose entire life has been the subject of a TV series. He is under 24/7 surveillance, with his every move being broadcast to the world. All of the people with whom he comes into contact -- relatives, friends, bosses, etc. -- are actors. Truman eventually finds out that he's been a Bubble Boy, and makes a dash for freedom.

Sounds pretty blah, when stated thus. But the devil is in the details -- and the details should be ominously familiar to thinking Americans.

In order to keep Truman from leaving the island (and the show), his knowledge of the world must be painfully circumscribed, and he must be raised in such a way that he does not care about much beyond the end of his nose. He is encouraged not to travel -- the "travel agency" in his hometown prominently displays a poster showing an airplane struck by lightning, with the legend "It Could Happen to You"; newspaper stories spend much time discussing the crime-ridden nature of the world outside of Truman's island.

Stepping from Truman's universe to ours, consider the extreme emphasis on crime stories, particularly violent-crime stories, in both local and national news -- even as the US crime rate has dropped dramatically over the last thirty years.

Consider also the number of "reality-based programming shows" showing America's inner cities at their ugliest. The underlying theme is that nice suburban white folks like you, the viewer, should stay away from the evil racially-mixed inner cities. It's no accident that these shows are especially prevalent on Rupert Murdoch's FOX TV. (It's also no accident that FOX shows TV programming like The X-Files, which lays strong emphasis on the viewer developing a cynical, fatalistic, "Why bother?" attitude towards government in particular and strangers of any kind in general: "Trust no one.")

The message, in both Truman's world and ours, is the same: Don't get out. Don't care about the world outside. Just go to work so you can earn money to buy the TV to which we want you to stay glued - that is, when you're not engaged in some other form of mindless frivolity we have provided for your entertainment and distraction.

No wonder most movie critics -- or political pundits who felt called upon to pronounce judgements for some reason or another -- didn't like the film: it's a sweeping indictment of contemporary mainstream American media and culture.

I wonder what Gore Vidal thought of it.

Meanwhile, back to our regularly scheduled programming:

God bless APJ readers: they send me the most useful items!

This is one of them: a heads-up about a long article about Texas' very own Bubble Boy, George W. Bush, and his handler Karen Hughes, by The New Republic's Michelle Cottle.

Here's a couple paragraphs from the opening page:

The reality is that Bush 2000 is one of the most tightly managed campaigns in political memory, thanks in large part to the fiercely protective Hughes. There is little leaking of inside info, Bush hews rigidly to a handful of stock speeches, and great care is taken to keep him from spontaneously interacting with the press and other candidates. Instead of debates, probing interviews, and lengthy Q&As, Team Bush schedules quickie news conferences (six or seven questions a pop), numerous speeches on warm and fuzzy broad themes, and periodic opportunities for journalists to talk policy details with campaign advisers. It's not that the governor is inaccessible; access is simply strictly controlled.
To some degree, this is typical front-runner caution. Don't bleed until you have to, as one senior Bushie explained to the press. But, in Bush's case, the aim is somewhat more involved. Whatever his overarching philosophy of government, George W. lacks much of the basic knowledge and experience expected in a presidential contender--especially a front-runner. By carefully controlling the circumstances under which Bush meets the press and public, Hughes allows her candidate to peddle his backslapping bonhomie without getting roped into discussing the specifics of why he wants to be president and how he plans to do the job. She has created for Bush a bubble so seamlessly artificial that it looks real.
But for how long? After months of adulation, the press's mood has recently begun to shift. The New York Times noted that the candidate's oft-repeated basic messages are growing tiresome. Pockets of the media--along with Bush's political opponents--are grumbling about the campaign's arrogance in picking and choosing how it engages them. "There's a reservoir of ill will building up," says one Washington journalist. "And their strategy looks like it's about to turn around and bite them on the ass." Recently, a Boston TV reporter surprised Bush during an interview with a couple of name-that-leader foreign affairs questions. Expect more such episodes as the media and the political competition push Bush to move beyond generalities and bromides. When that happens, the governor may come to regret the protective bubble that Hughes has provided. By not allowing Bush to sharpen his skills and make his mistakes early on, when few voters were paying attention, her success in shielding her candidate from the ugliness of the political fray may ultimately backfire. And Team Bush may come to find that Karen Hughes has done her job just a little too well.

The media's growing disenchantment with Dubya may well be the result of instances such as this one described by Ms. Cottle:

Other times Hughes simply shuts down the conversation. Just after the governor's reelection in 1998, Slater pressed Bush about whether he had ever been arrested. "He said, `After 1968? No.' I said, `What about before 1968?' He said, `Well ...' and at that moment Karen stepped in and said, `Wait a minute, I've not heard this.' She clearly wasn't prepared for whatever it was he was about to say, and he shut up." Slater argued that it was better for the governor to deal with any revelations sooner rather than later, and Bush agreed to get back to him on the matter. "To this day I have no idea what he was going to say," says Slater. "After she got to him, he shut up."

Now I wonder why the year 1968 would be of such significance to George W. Bush?

And why, pray tell, didn't he just have the brains to say "No, I have not been arrested"? As he and Karen Hughes well know, any record of arrests he might have had in the past was wiped clean by his getting a brand-new driver's license number in March of 1995, well before he ran for reelection as governor of Texas.

Perhaps it could be that certain of his brushes with the law -- such as when he was nabbed in the fall of 1994, about six months prior to getting his license wiped, for shooting at protected killdeer birds when he was supposed to be on a dove hunt -- are too well-known and/or too awful to be covered up totally?

The next few months will be interesting, because we will be able to determine just how strong the Bush family's hold is on the GOP and its media friends such as FOX.

If Dubya's folks can keep a lid on the bad news, they might be able to sail him through the primaries to the nomination, picking up boatloads of ducats on the way, until the sheer amount of the scandals being unearthed finally reaches critical mass.

If they can't -- and there are already signs that certain conservatives and other frightened Republicans are looking to try to have him removed from the race now before he can do truly serious damage to the GOP -- then expect him to be out of the picture by early spring.

Either way, he will be out of the race. And Al Gore will be our next President.

Yet another APJ reader has sent in some information that puts the last stake through the mouldering dead horse known as "Chinagate".

According to the fine folks at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, China generally has around 20 ICBMs capable of hitting the US from the Chinese mainland at any one time. These ICBM's require hours of preparation to launch as they are liquid fueled, a technology the US abandoned in the 1950's as being far too expensive and unreliable. These missiles are kept in an unready state, unfueled, because the fuel is highly volatile and corrosive. And our spy satellites, which can pick up items barely a yard across from a distance of 20,000 miles, will certainly be able to spot any Chinese attempts to fuel and ready these missiles, giving the Pentagon plenty of time to take action against them.

If the US were to strike first, all of China's ICBMs could be destroyed inside of 45 minutes. China currently has only one submarine capable of launching nuclear ballistic missiles from less than intercontinental ranges. Possibly 4-5 submarines are in the planning stages for the next 10-20 years, but plans for these subs would be scrapped if China signs on to the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty.

This was actually quite likely as recently as last month, but the Senate Republican's decision to turn America into a rogue nuclear state has understandably made the Chinese somewhat reluctant to give up the plans for the new submarines at this time.

My informant also pointed out that China's technology was not likely, given the current Clinton-era controls on high-tech exports to the PRC, to suddenly develop to the point where it would make China a credible nuclear threat to anyone but itself.

The only way China's technical know-how would be likely to rapidly increase would be if the controls on high-tech exports to China were suddenly loosened -- which is exactly (as I pointed out a few weeks ago in this space) what George Dubya Bush, no doubt mindful of his Uncle Prescott's many business connections with the People's Republic, advocates, according to an October 19, 1999 Wall Street Journal article.

It's a good thing that the man BartCop calls "Gov. Blow Monkey" is doomed, because if he makes it into the White House, we'd have a real ChinaGate on our hands in short order.