Enron - Patron Saint of Bush's Fake News

[Guest guest]

C

Sun, 20 Mar 2005 22:07:32 -0500

[GranniesAgainstGeorge] Enron - Patron Saint of Bush's Fake News

 

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/arts/20Rich.html

 

March 20, 2005

FRANK RICH

Enron: Patron Saint of Bush's Fake News

 

JUST when Americans are being told it's safe to hand over their

savings to Wall Street again, he's baaaack! Looking not unlike Chucky,

the demented doll of perennial B-horror-movie renown, Ken Lay has

crawled out of Houston's shadows for a media curtain call.

 

His trial is still months away, but there he was last Sunday on " 60

Minutes, " saying he knew nothin' 'bout nothin' that went down at

Enron. This week he is heading toward the best-seller list, as an

involuntary star of " Conspiracy of Fools, " the New York Times reporter

Kurt Eichenwald's epic account of the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme

anointed America's " most innovative company " (six years in a row by

Fortune magazine). Coming soon, the feature film: Alex Gibney's

" Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, " a documentary seen at

Sundance, goes into national release next month. As long as you're not

among those whose 401(k)'s and pensions were wiped out, it's morbidly

entertaining. In one surreal high point, Mr. Lay likens investigations

of Enron to terrorist attacks on America. For farce, there's the sight

of a beaming Alan Greenspan as he accepts the " Enron Award for

Distinguished Public Service " only days after Enron has confessed to

filing five years of bogus financial reports. Then again, given the

implicit quid pro quo in this smarmy tableau, maybe that's the Enron

drama's answer to a sex scene.

 

The Bush administration, eager to sell the country on " personal "

Social Security accounts, cannot be all that pleased to see Kenny Boy

again. He's the poster boy for how big guys can rip off suckers in the

stock market. He also dredges up some inconvenient pre-9/11 memories

of Bush family business. Enron was the biggest Bush-Cheney campaign

contributor in the 2000 election. Kenny Boy and his lovely wife Linda

flew the first President Bush and Barbara Bush to the ensuing

Inauguration on the Enron jet. Even as Enron was presiding over

rolling blackouts in California, Dick Cheney or his aides had at least

six meetings with the company's executives to carve up government

energy policy in 2001. Even now what exactly transpired at those

meetings remains a secret.

 

But never mind. The president himself gave his word when the Enron

scandal broke that Kenny Boy was really more of a supporter of Ann

Richards anyway. Feeling our pain, Mr. Bush told us of his own

personal tragedy: his mother-in-law lost $8,000 she had invested in

Enron. Soon stuff was happening in Iraq, and the case was closed, or

at least forgotten.

 

Yet the larger shadows linger. Revisiting the Enron story as it

re-emerges in 2005 is to be reminded of just how much the Enron

culture has continued to shape the Bush administration long after the

company itself imploded and the Lays were eighty-sixed from the White

House Christmas card list.

 

The enduring legacy of Enron can be summed up in one word: propaganda.

Here was a corporate house of cards whose business few could explain

and whose source of profits was an utter mystery - and yet it thrived,

unquestioned, for years. How? As the narrator says in " The Smartest

Guys in the Room, " Enron " was fixated on its public relations

campaigns. " It churned out slick PR videos as if it were a Hollywood

studio. It browbeat the press (until a young Fortune reporter, Bethany

McLean, asked one question too many). In a typical ruse in 1998, a

gaggle of employees was rushed onto an empty trading floor at the

company's Houston headquarters to put on a fictional show of busy

trading for visiting Wall Street analysts being escorted by Mr. Lay.

" We brought some of our personal stuff, like pictures, to make it look

like the area was lived in, " a laid-off Enron employee told The Wall

Street Journal in 2002. " We had to make believe we were on the phone

buying and selling " even though " some of the computers didn't even work. "

 

If this Potemkin village sounds familiar, take a look at the ongoing

60-stop " presidential roadshow " in which Mr. Bush has " conversations

on Social Security " with " ordinary citizens " for the consumption of

local and national newscasts. As in the president's " town meeting "

campaign appearances last year, the audiences are stacked with

prescreened fans; any dissenters who somehow get in are quickly

hustled away by security goons. But as The Washington Post reported

last weekend, the preparations are even more elaborate than the

finished product suggests; the seeming reality of the event is tweaked

as elaborately as that of a television reality show. Not only are the

panelists for these conversations recruited from administration

supporters, but they are rehearsed the night before, with a White

House official playing Mr. Bush. One participant told The Post, " We

ran through it five times before the president got there. " Finalists

who vary just slightly from the administration's pitch are banished

from the cast at the last minute, " American Idol " -style.

 

Like Enron's stockholders, American taxpayers pay for the production

of such propaganda, even if its message, like that of the Enron show

put on for visiting analysts, misrepresents and distorts the bottom

line of the scheme that is being sold. We paid for last year's phony

television news reports in which the faux reporter Karen Ryan

" interviewed " administration officials who gave partially deceptive

information hyping the Medicare prescription-drug program. We paid

Armstrong Williams his $240,000 for delivering faux-journalistic

analysis of the No Child Left Behind act.

 

The administration cycled the Ryan and Williams paychecks through the

PR giant Ketchum Communications. Ketchum was also one of the companies

hired to flack for Andersen, the now-defunct Enron accounting firm

that shredded a ton of documents. We don't know what, if any, role

Ketchum is playing in the White House's Social Security propaganda

push, though we do know the company has received at least $97 million

from the government, according to a Congressional report.

 

That $97 million may yet prove a mere down payment. The Times reported

last weekend that the administration told executive-branch agencies

simply to ignore a stern directive by the Congressional Government

Accountability Office discouraging the use of " covert propaganda " like

the Karen Ryan " news reports. " In other words, the brakes are off, and

before long, the government could have a larger budget for fake news

than actual television news divisions have for real news. At last

weekend's Gridiron dinner, Mr. Bush made a joke about how " most " of

his good press on Social Security came from Armstrong Williams, and

the Washington press corps yukked it up. The joke, however, is on them

- and us.

 

USA Today reported this month that the Department of Homeland

Security, having failed miserably to secure American ports and air

transportation from potential Al Qaeda attacks, has nonetheless

shelled out $100,000-plus to hire " a Hollywood liaison " : Bobbie Faye

Ferguson, an actress whose credits include the movie " The Bermuda

Triangle " and guest shots on television schlock like " Designing Women "

and " The Dukes of Hazzard. " She will " work with moviemakers and

scriptwriters " to give us homeland security infotainment - which is to

actual homeland security what the movie " Independence Day " is to an

actual terrorist attack.

 

Another propagandist with a rising profile is Susan Molinari, the

onetime CBS News personality who appears regularly on news shows like

" Hardball " and " Capitol Report. " As she bloviates from the right about

Social Security or the fake newsman Jeff Gannon, she is invariably

described as " a former Republican Congresswoman " or a " CNBC political

analyst. " But her actual current jobs remain mysteriously unmentioned:

C.E.O. of the Washington Group, Ketchum's lobbying firm, and president

of Ketchum Public Affairs. Were the Ketchum link disclosed, perhaps

some real NBC reporter might find the nerve to ask her what other

Karen Ryans and Armstrong Williamses might be on the Ketchum payroll.

Or not.

 

The Bush propagandists have been successful at many tasks, from

fomenting the canard that Iraqis attacked on 9/11 to deflecting moral

outrage from Abu Ghraib and toward indecency as defined by its Federal

Communications Commission. But Social Security may be a bridge too far

even for propaganda machinery of this heft. Polls find that an

ever-increasing majority of the country rejects the idea of letting

Wall Street get its hands on its retirement savings.

 

Americans do have short memories, but it's the administration's bad

luck that not just Kenny Boy but a whole brigade of bubble plutocrats

have lately been yanked back into the spotlight by their legal

travails: WorldCom's Bernard J. Ebbers, Tyco's L. Dennis Kozlowski,

HealthSouth's Richard M. Scrushy, Global Crossing's Gary Winnick. No

one is glad to see them. The public knows that the economy has not

fully mended, and that there remain different economic rules for

insiders than for the panelists drafted for the presidential Social

Security roadshow. The new bankruptcy bill embraced this month by

Republicans and Democrats alike throws Americans paying usurious

credit-card interest to the wolves even as wealthy debtors remain

protected.

 

You can catch the public mood in the reaction to Martha Stewart's

homecoming. Despite the news media's heavy-breathing efforts to hype

her emergence from jail as the heartwarming comeback of a born-again

humanitarian, the bottom line shows that few in the audience are

buying it. The Martha Stewart Omnimedia stock price started tumbling

the moment she was back on camera, in line with the cratered

circulation and ad sales of her magazine. Handing out hot cocoa to

reporters at her Bedford, N.Y., estate did not turn the tide, and her

spinoff of " The Apprentice " may be arriving just as the country is

getting sick of C.E.O.'s again. Coincidentally or not, ratings for the

existing " Apprentice " are off in tandem with the filing for bankruptcy

protection by Donald Trump's casino empire, the saturation coverage of

his lavish nuptials and the introduction of a Trump fragrance.

 

It's against this backdrop that the returning Mr. Lay - completely

unrepentant, still purporting on " 60 Minutes " that he's an innocent

victim of others - could be the Democrats' new best friend. A Texas

tycoon who helped create the political career of George W. Bush only

to be discarded when scandal struck has re-emerged at just the precise

moment when he might do his old buddy the most harm.