In today’s Times, an article on the new French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, begins with an extended, and ultimately baffling metaphor, in which the reporter riffs on the fact that Sarkozy rode a horse. As near as I can figure, the point is that while Sarkozy rode a horse-indeed, a white horse- he is not the Lone Ranger or Gary Cooper at High Noon. He is not, in short, the man of destiny single handedly imposing order on a fractious frontier. A sidebar (print edition only) apparently helps those of us too dim to get the point:
Bush on a horse sends one signal. Sarkozy on a horse sends another.
Translation: Sarkozy’s no Lone Ranger, Bush is.
The reporter who wrote the piece no doubt did not write the sidebar, so he can’t be blamed. But someone at the Times wrote it, and an editor let it in. The sidebar itself sends a signal, in fact a shout, of its own, about the American media and its insistence on attributing masculine “strength” to Bush in particular, and Republican politicians in general.
The Times apparently believes that our brush cutting president, owner of a bought for photo-op ranch in Crawford, must be a John Wayne in the saddle, because – well, just because. After all, Reagan was, wasn’t he, and aren’t all Republicans man’s men?
The truth, something the media prefers not to tell (or discover) is that Bush’s cowboy image is a disguise for a moral and physical coward, metaphorically revealed in the real life relationship between our cowboy president and horses.
I submit the following facts to a candid world:
The only relevant result at Google Images for the term “bush horse” is the following:
Maybe the Times can clarify exactly what signal it believes this image sends. You will not find another.
Rest assured if Bush rode horses, Rove would make sure he issued his cowboy announcements, steely eyed and hand on his holster, from the back of his steed. If you have any doubt, do a straight Google of the term “bush afraid of horses” and peruse the links. Where’s there’s smoke there’s fire, in some cases at least. Lord knows if Karl could get George on a horse he’d have done it by now.
Now, I don’t particularly care that our cowboy president is afraid of horses. It’s not even surprising. What sets me off is the reflexive assumption by our paper of record that, despite the fact that he hasn’t been seen on horseback in six years, our chickenshit president is the Lone Ranger, horse and all. Why do they rush to swallow, and even embellish, the Rovian Bush fantasy?
I always thought that at least one function of the press was to get through to the reality behind the images politicians seek to project. The Times, after all, worked hard to get behind the images of Democrats, by, in those cases, pushing Republican lines of attack (e.g., Gore the liar (Bush gets a pass), Kerry and his “butler”, (Bush gets a pass), and Edwards and his haircut (all Republicans get a pass)) that bore less resemblance to reality than the images they supplanted. In the Wonderland world of our media, when Republicans are the subject, the myth is all we hear.
Bush hardly needs Fox when the alleged non-partisan media is so willing to spread this type of propaganda.