In One Ear...

Just a few words in response to the comment, yesterday--thanks, Dennis!--with a link to the Stephen Colbert performance at your White House Correspondents' roast the other night. In fact--did I mention this already, Bush?--I had read the transcript and had enjoyed it as a brilliant piece of satire. You, I gather, did not. Enjoy it, I mean. Granted, it was a tough piece. And the assembled media remained largely silent, perhaps embarrassed by its biting accuracy.

What's interesting to me, though, is that the media's silence persisted even after the event. Total silence. Contrast that with the adulation poured on the other comic of the evening, that Bush impersonator from Texas, and you'll see what I mean. That guy has been all over the TV news and talk shows for days! They've been rattling on about his childhood, his early years as an impersonator, his Clinton imitation, the hours it takes to put on his make-up... it's been endless.

So, okay, he does a really good job. It's mildly funny, too. The press ate it up. You collaborated--anxious, no doubt, to put a more human complexion on your image. But it was essentially friendly, Bush, no? Not real satire. The Colbert piece, on the other hand, cut close to the bone. And was rewarded with the silent treatment. I can understand that it would seem tasteless and disrespectful to you personally, Bush, but don't you think the discrepancy is interesting? Does it not say something about how cautious the media have been when it comes to anything critical of your good self? What's going on here? Why do you always manage to get a virtually free pass?

Well, not so free, perhaps. A thirty-one percent approval rating in the polls this morning. The uproar surrounding your latest appointment of Air Force General Michael Hayden to succeed Porter Goss as Director of the CIA suggests that you no longer inspire the timid silence that you did for far too long from the media and the U.S. Congress. I can't claim to know much about Hayden--though his impeccable uniform and his ramrod stance do bug me a bit, I have to say, as does his record of loud defense for your habit of spying on unknown numbers of our fellow citizens without warrant.

Your choice reminds me, too, of something I have long believed: that you have a tin ear for political realities. As the lead editorial in today's New York Times noted: "the choice of Gen. Hayden sends a politically tone-deaf signal" to CIA agents and employees whose morale "is at an all-time low." How could you possibly not have anticipated what kind of response this choice might receive amongst your political allies in Congress, as well as with your critics? Did no one of your advisors mention this to you? Did you just not care about others' judgment, even when well-informed and insightful? Or did it simply, like so much information you receive that fails to justify or confirm your stubbornly-held preconceptions, go in one ear and out the other?