From A Newsweek Article
BUSH’S BIRD is big and luscious, golden brown and generously garnished. But, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, the bird was just a prop. Soldiers were actually served from steam trays; the White House said the turkey in the photograph was simply on hand to prettify the chow line.
The revelation is the latest in a series of stagecrafted moments designed to shine an impossibly perfect light on the president. Turkeygate unfolded merely one day after British Airways that announced that none of its pilots made contact with President Bush’s plane during its secret flight to Baghdad, despite White House claims of a dramatic midair exchange that nearly prompted Bush to call off his trip. On May 1, Bush landed on the deck of the USS Lincoln and, in front of a giant banner emblazoned MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, declared “major combat operations have ended.” Six month later he would deny that his staff had hung the banner there, though there’s little doubt they had. To give a speech in New York after September 11, Bush brought in extremely powerful lights to illuminate the Statue of Liberty behind him; for a talk he delivered at Mount Rushmore, cameras were positioned so Bush’s profile was perfectly aligned with the presidents carved in stone.
Author and presidential historian Douglas Brinkley has analyzed how presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Jimmy Carter craft their public personas and has concluded that in this age of mass media “all we need is the one image. We don’t need a transcript of a great speech.” Bush, he says, is a master of creating those images. Brinkley spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Brian Braiker about presidential stagecraft, what Bush does best and how productions like the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner can come back to haunt him.
Is this really an issue? The fact the the President traveled to Baghdad should not really be an issue. As commander-in-chief he has the obligation to see to the morale of his troops and every right to visit them in the field. If the only thing they can cling to is the fact that the turkey was only a centerpiece then they have serious troubles.
President Bush could personally find the cure for Cancer, but they will still nitpick about something. Talk about liberal bias.
To tell you the truth, I never really believed in how biased Newsweek was until I started reading it at my previous job over my lunch breaks. Though it did cover many touchy subjects on both sides, it always seemed to treat conservatives and conservative thought with disdain.
Usually it was done through snide comments or backhanded compliments. The result was the same, smearing conservatives while giving liberals mostly a free ride.
