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Brokeback Wasteland

Imagine that the fire chief in your town is out partying with his first-responders while your house burns down. Months later, as you toil trying to salvage what's left of your belongings and make plans to rebuild, the fire chief sends his father to the town square with this proclamation: "The fires may have destroyed his home, but today we also know that they couldn't break the spirit of that person who calls this remarkable, improbable town home."

I know that speeches like these are meant to celebrate courage and optimism, especially in the face of great tragedy, but in the wider circumstances such words have another purpose—to point to something else instead. When the elder Bush gave a similar speech today at Tulane University's commencement salute, it sounded to me like just another great distraction. Instead of speaking to the tragedy of government failure, of bad planning and inefficient responses, he said: "Hey, look over there!"¹

I am reminded, not without irony, of the speech the younger Bush gave in Omaha, Nebraska, in February. At the time, he was out promoting his plan for private Social Security accounts, but during the oratory a man jumped up and shouted, "Quit lying ... you liar." In response the president said, "We love free speech in America," then continued his speech.² Instead of confronting what is said, one's attention is directed to a pleasant abstraction (spirit, values, America), as in: "Hey, look over there!"

1.  What the ex-president said was: "The flood waters may have breached the levees that surround this city and may have destroyed home after home, block after block, but today we also know they couldn't break the spirit of the people who call this remarkable, improbable city home." See "Bush and Clinton salute Tulane graduates," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 13, 2006.
2.  "Bush Wraps Up Social Security Tour," CBS News, February 4, 2005. What the man shouted to Mr Bush was not as brief as reported. A student at Nebraska Wesleyan University gave this account to the campus publication, Reveille: 'The stage was decked in posters and graphics so much so that there was no mistaking the president's impending message: Social Security for the 21st Century. Not exactly a riveting topic for a college student, but I was there more for the experience than the message. And the experience was definitely worth it. How else would I have gotten to hear exactly what the guy behind me started yelling out mid-way through the speech? ... Yes, just as Bush was laying out the current problems with Social Security, a gentleman a few rows back started screaming, "You're a liar! How dare you come here and lie to the American people! You're full of [insert your own expletive here]!" To which the people in front of us promptly responded, none too pleasantly.... All I could think was, who is this guy, who let him in here and what does he think he's doing? We are sitting in an auditorium filled with thousands of Bush supporters. Does he want to get beat up? All the while, President Bush was on stage, and the picture of composure, he just chuckled and said, "We love free speech in America."'