DUMB SHOW.....ARTICLE

[Guest guest]

Dumb show

 

Charlie Brooker

Saturday October 23, 2004

The Guardian

 

Heady times. The US election draws ever nearer, and while the rest of

the world bangs its head against the floorboards screaming " Please

God, not Bush! " , the candidates clash head to head in a series of

live televised debates. It's a bit like American Idol, but with

terrifying global ramifications. You've got to laugh. Or have you?

Have you seen the debates? I urge you to do so The exemplary BBC News

website (www.bbc.co.uk/news) hosts unexpurgated streaming footage of

all the recent debates, plus clips from previous encounters, through

Reagan and Carter, all the way back to Nixon versus JFK.

 

Watching Bush v Kerry, two things immediately strike you. First, the

opening explanation of the rules makes the whole thing feel like a

Radio 4 parlour game. And second, George W Bush is... well, he's...

Jesus, where do you start?

 

The internet's a-buzz with speculation that Bush has been wearing a

wire, receiving help from some off-stage lackey. Screen grabs

appearing to show a mysterious bulge in the centre of his back are

being traded like Top Trumps. Prior to seeing the debate footage, I

regarded this with healthy scepticism: the whole " wire " scandal was

just wishful thinking on behalf of some amateur Michael Moores, I

figured. And then I watched the footage.

 

Quite frankly, the man's either wired or mad. If it's the former, he

should be flung out of office: tarred, feathered and kicked in the

nuts. And if it's the latter, his behaviour goes beyond strange, and

heads toward terrifying He looks like he's listening to something we

can't hear. He blinks, he mumbles, he lets a sentence trail off,

starts a new one, then reverts back to whatever he was saying in the

first place. Each time he recalls a statistic (either from memory or

the voice in his head), he flashes us a dumb little smile, like a

toddler proudly showing off its first bowel movement. Forgive me for

employing the language of the playground, but the man's a tool.

 

So I sit there and I watch this and I start scratching my head,

because I'm trying to work out why Bush is afforded any kind of

credence or respect whatsoever in his native country. His performance

is so transparently bizarre, so feeble and stumbling, it's a miracle

he wasn't laughed off the stage. And then I start hunting around the

internet, looking to see what the US media made of the whole " wire "

debate. And they just let it die. They mentioned it in passing,

called it a wacko conspiracy theory and moved on.

 

Yet whether it turns out to be true or not, right now it's certainly

plausible - even if you discount the bulge photos and simply watch

the president's ridiculous smirking face. Perhaps he isn't wired.

Perhaps he's just gone gaga. If you don't ask the questions, you'll

never know the truth.

 

The silence is all the more troubling since in the past the US news

media has had no problem at all covering other wacko conspiracy

theories, ones with far less evidence to support them. (For

infuriating confirmation of this, watch the second part of the must-

see documentary series The Power Of Nightmares (Wed, 9pm, BBC2) and

witness the absurd hounding of Bill Clinton over the Whitewater and

Vince Foster non-scandals.)

 

Throughout the debate, John Kerry, for his part, looks and sounds a

bit like a haunted tree. But at least he's not a lying, sniggering,

drink-driving, selfish, reckless, ignorant, dangerous, backward,

drooling, twitching, blinking, mouse-faced little cheat. And besides,

in a fight between a tree and a bush, I know who I'd favour.

 

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying

Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby

disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will

endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted

bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John

Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now

that we need you?