Bush Serves a Plastic Turkey- The Guardian

Stuffed by a Plastic Turkey
Bush's Gesture Politics Suggest a Man Seriously Worried About His Career

by Mark Lawson
December 6, 2003

The 1980s movie The Ploughman's Lunch took its title from an early example of what we have now come to know as spin. Ian McEwan's script took its central image from the fact that the bread-and-cheese snack that claimed to link yuppies in pubs to their ancestors who toiled on the soil was an invention of the contemporary advertising and catering trades. In Richard Eyre's film, this fraudulent food became a metaphor for political lying and pretence at the time of the Falklands war.

If anyone makes a similar film about the attack on Iraq, the title would now have to be The Plastic Turkey. In a revelation certain to be taught at schools of democracy and journalism for years to come, it has been revealed that the apparently appetizing turkey that President Bush carried towards beaming troops last week in Baghdad had been genetically modified to a degree that would lead even the most profit-hungry farmers to protest. The bird was the kind of model used by butchers and Hollywood set-dressers.

Following this disclosure, the president is, unlike his political prop, stuffed: with a gap in the storyboards for his re-election commercials. A picture intended to say to viewers "The Eagle Has Landed", in fact spelled out: "This Bird Never Flew."

The fakery went further. The hoax roast in the president's hands cannot even be claimed as a symbolic stand-in for the steaming birds that were actually served. Reports say that the US troops were given airline-style meals of pre-packaged meat. And the pretend chef had flown to Baghdad in an Air Force One that filed a fake flight-plan, pretending to be a small corporate jet.

The latter act - though embarrassing for a politician who promised to end the easy lying of the Clinton years - can probably just about be excused as security. But the affair of the plastic turkey can only be attributed to insecurity.

Although the image of George Bush, until recently, was of a man who could do whatever he wanted in both America and the world, recent events have suggested a man seriously worried about both his image and his career. The president seems to have entered a phase of gesture politics, and the gestures are those of a man who, while still swimming vigorously, has suddenly come to accept the possibility of drowning.

Apart from risking his life to deliver a stunt turkey to the Baghdad mess, the president is now set to revive the US space program: it's rumored that Nasa will, this month, announce new missions to the moon. And a man accused of imperial arrogance has even made a significant concession to the rival power base of Europe by abandoning protectionist steel tariffs. It can be argued that this is a cosmetic move - because Bush had already lost the votes of the steel states in the US - but the move indicates a politician much less happy than he once was to be seen as isolationist.

Even during an American election cycle, the apparent decision to aim for the moon is surprising. The original lunar program grew out of the bipolar political world of the cold war. Kennedy was only interested in landing in the Sea of Tranquility because of the fear that the Russians might splash down first. Now, with only one superpower, it will be not a space race but a space lap-of-honor or training run for America.

It's a measure of Bush's reputation that environmentalists have already accused him of planning to rob the moon of mineral deposits or light. But there's another possibility. A pattern is emerging in which the Bush White House - like a child hiding its face at a bad memory - seeks to replace a negative image with a positive one.

The original Gulf war photo-op planned for use in the 2004 election campaign was the commander-in-chief landing a jet on an aircraft carrier that flew the banner: Mission Accomplished. Now that Mission Impossible might be a more fitting message to fly from US ships, a substitute image was needed for the militaristic bits of the ads. This was provided by Dubya as carver-in-chief on Thanksgiving Day. The mooted new moonshots are calculated to wipe from the collective memory the images of the Challenger disaster.

If the president were to use the plastic turkey of Baghdad in commercials now, his opponents would make a real meal of it, so Bush 2004 needs some other photo-ops. Perhaps the new Nasa plans indicate that he intends to disguise Air Force One as a rocket and stage a photo-shoot on the moon.

Whatever the details, the message is clear. Though he still lacks anything as pesky as a plausible Democrat opponent, Dubya is starting to fear that his administration may become the second one-term turkey served up by the Bush dynasty.

The Guardian

This article is reprinted here in the interests of archiving histories. Readers are encouraged to view the original at The Guardian.

Bush Serves a Plastic Turkey- The Australian

Now watch Bush dine out on a plastic bird perhaps
The Australian
December 16, 2003

Ok, he looks like Saddam Hussein. He sounds like Saddam Hussein. And, yes, he has the same DNA. But can we be sure that it is, in fact, the former Iraqi leader? And not just some poor turkey? Another of his hapless body doubles? Or even a clone? Turkey. Consider the word and its significance in the region, not simply because Turkey is a nation in the neighbourhood. In all its other forms, the word turkey refers to the giant North American chook and is a case of mistaken identity if not deceptive packaging. You see, the Pilgrim Fathers exporting the bird to England called it a turkey because, at that time, Turkey was the most fashionable place for food, particularly Turkish delightful desserts. Thus it was more fashionable for an English aristocrat to have a Turkish chef than a Parisian.

So, right from the beginning, the turkey flew under false colours. A fact of urgent political relevance, as this column will now reveal. However, it is important to remember that the turkey Ð the chook, not the nation Ð has lent its name to other things. Consider the term turkey shoot, describing a decidedly one-sided battle. As in Gulf Wars I and II where the mighty US had no difficulty in dispatching Hussein's grossly overrated army. Turkey can be applied to a hapless individual, as in, "He's a real turkey" or to a spectacular flop, specifically of an expensive Broadway production. In a sense, the post-war occupation of Iraq could be thus described. The war was a success but the peace has been a turkey.

All these meanings coalesced when George W. Bush Ð whose presidency promises to be a turkey Ð arrived in Baghdad carrying one. A turkey. Bush's descent from the heavens would have cost more than the total budgets of The Producers, The Boy from Oz and two Rogers and Hammerstein revivals. Brought to Iraq in the strictest of secrecy, the President presented his nonplussed troops with the aforementioned chook Ð for the purpose of a spectacular photo opportunity.

Bush's Thanksgiving turkey, around which the beaming Bush and his happy warriors were grouped, was photographed and filmed from every angle. Back in Washington, it was regarded as one of the greatest public relations triumphs of the whole saga. Right up there with the carefully stage-managed landing of the Commander in Chief on the deck of that US carrier, wearing his really sexy, Right Stuff jet pilot's uniform.

But it turns out that this turkey shoot Ð and here I use the term in its photographic sense Ð was a right stuff-up, because it has been revealed that the turkey wasn't a turkey. Well, not a real turkey. It was a prop turkey, a pretend turkey. Just as ketchup replaced blood for violent scenes in movies, and mashed potato substituted for ice cream in Happy Days (to prevent its melting under the studio lights), the President had taken a plastic turkey Ð one used for gourmet magazine shoots Ð to the mess hall.

Which added another level of the fake, the tawdry and the sham to the whole lamentable exercise of Operation Perfect Freedom or Operation Democratic Orgasm or whatever it is they've called it.

Michael Moore, one of the regime's trenchant critics, put it well in an open letter to his President: "The fake honey glaze on that fake bird wasn't much different from the fake honey glaze that covers this war. And the fake stuffing in the fake bird was just the right symbol for our country during these times. America loves fake honey glaze. It loves to be stuffed, and damn it, you knew that."

He went on to remind his fellow Americans that under the Bush regime nearly 3 million US jobs have disappeared, along with a $US281 billion ($380 billion) surplus, and that the US is "stuck in a war that will never end", linking this spectacular achievement to Bush's latest manoeuvre.

Years ago, hand on heart while gazing at a portrait of my patron saint, Bertrand Russell, I swore to always "talk turkey". That is, to get to the heart of the matter and tell the truth at all times. Which is why I talked turkey here today. In contrast to the unreal turkey that Bush showed the world in Baghdad. But a fake turkey is the perfect symbol for a fake President because, as everyone knows, Al Gore really won the election.

Which brings us back to Hussein. I'm not convinced. The bloke they pulled out of that hole looked more like Willie Nelson.

The Australian

This article is reprinted here in the interests of archiving histories. Readers are encouraged to view the original at The Australian website.

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