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Presidential RPF
I confess that I've read the first three books in the Twilight Saga. I actually thought I would read all four just for shits and giggles, but Eclipse was really the last straw...although it was so unsubstantial that right now, I can't even remember what made it worse than the first two. I just recall thinking that I'd never read anything that was so unfit for publication. I mean, it was just a big fat book full of...nothing. What all of the Twilight books have in common is that they reminded me of really bad fanfiction -- one-dimensional characters and bizarre little vignettes of overwrought drama all thrown together with seemingly no cohesion or attempt at real storytelling.
I was once again reminded of bad fanfiction while reading The London Review of Books' incredible review of George W. Bush's presidential memoir, Decision Points. This is not so much a book review as it is a scathingly accurate portrait of both the man himself and his presidency. I alternately laughed out loud and came close to tears while reading it. Who couldn't laugh over Bush's recollection of how he supposedly became ardently pro-life after his terrifying mother showed him the fetus she had just miscarried, which she had apparently decided to hold onto as some sort of macabre keepsake (Bush's mother later claimed that it was one of the household servants who showed young George the fetus...but she didn't deny that she did in fact save it. In a jar.) Who couldn't cry over the very idea of this buffoon being president for eight dreadful years?
The author of the review, Eliot Weinberger, notes that the book was actually written by a sizable team that included one of Bush's speechwriters and a number of editors, researchers and "trusted friends." No doubt Bush's own contribution was minimial. Weinberger marvels over the book's "post-modernism" -- pastiches lifted from other books, including moments where Bush himself was not present, rewritten to make it seem as if he had been; prose that consists almost entirely of "anaesthetised declarative sentences" intersticed with an occasional attempt at cheesy lyricism; a continuous blurring of the line between fiction and non-fiction. Weinberger is making too much of this with his talk about "post-modernism." Any reader of fanfiction will recognize Decision Points for what it really is: RPF. And pretty dreadful RPF from the sound of it.
Much in the way that J2 RP ficcers will take a couple of pretty boy-actors and make them into fascinating secret agents or battlefield doctors or rentboys with hearts-of-gold or whatever, the folks who wrote Decision Points took a shockingly mediocre and nasty little man (and a very bad president) and tried to reinvent him as a charismatic, thoughtful and stalwart leader. But because this is bad RPF, that reinvention is not accomplished with actual character development or cohesive storytelling, but with...one-dimensional characters and bizarre little vignettes of overwrought drama. It's presidential RPF written with all the skill of a Stephenie Meyer. And just as fascinatingly creepy little things leak through all the flabby blather in Twilight (Bella's hilariously clueless sexuality, her insistence upon dutifully keeping house for her father), the creepiest little things come through all the pseudo-bold decisionating in Decision Points -- the aforementioned fetus story, Bush's Norman Bates-ish appelation of Barbara Bush as "Mother," his claim that the lowest point of his presidency was having Kanye West accuse him of not caring about black people.
All of this sounds so off-the-wall that it's almost enough to make me want to read Decision Points -- there is, after all, something delightfully entertaining about really dreadful RPF. But then I realize that this man, whose person and presidency were so awful they had to be reinvented as dreadful RPF by a team of fanficcers, really was the president of the United States for eight years. And worse yet, I realize that this ludicrous 500-page chunk of dreadful presidential RPF is not only something that Bush no doubt believes about himself, but that a great many people in this country believed -- and still believe, and will always believe -- about him as well. There's nothing funny about that.
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Over here, the main publicity George Bush got and still gets is twofold - firstly, his role in Iraq and usually this is portrayed in a wholly negative light, and secondly his inability to speak coherently and intelligibly. Buffoon is a common description and that is combined with a sense of horror that a man so clearly intellectually challenged was in charge of the most dangerous nation in the world for so long. It is hard to laugh at him misunderestimating things when he had his finger on the nuclear button and managed to take us to war...
It is scary a 'biography' can be written like RPF - you've got to hope that won't be the only source that survives!!!
PS You managed to get a lot farther than I did with the Twilight books; I gave up after struggling through the first over-long badly written twaddle. How the hell does something as bad as that get published let alone become so bloody successful? It is a complete mystery.
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Here in the States, Bush's deficiency in this area was considered by many to be a sign that he was a common-sense, straight-talkin' man of the people. Anyone who talks fancy must be a snob who's out of touch with "real Americans." The fact that Bush really was a snob -- an old-money, Ivy League blueblood -- was completely ignored by people who were so charmed by his faux-Texas accent and goofy malapropisms. Bizarrely, though, the same people who loved his Average Joe demeanor also believed that he really was an intelligent guy...but he was just so goshdarn down to earth that he didn't have to show it off (unlike that uppity Obama). I think this is a reflection of something that a lot of Americans like to believe about themselves and so that's what they look for in their leaders.
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It reminds me very much of Jon Stewart's quote that "I *want* my President to be smarter than me!" Stewart was being the smart one there. Stewart wants to delegate the tough jobs to the smart people.
Strangely enough, I thought that it was Obama who was the dowm to earth guy. He can be erudite, OR down to earth, or worldly, and varies it depending on whom he was speaking to.
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The last Democrat who could really pull off being both down to earth and genuinely intelligent was Bill Clinton. You should have seen enough by now to know that Obama's communication skills and command of language have been painted as any of the following:
- "Just Words"
- Teleprompter!
- The sinister verbal trickery of a Kenyan Muslim Socialist who wants to establish Sharia law and/or a One World Government
- Uppityness
I'm sure if I hung out in the farthest corners of right wing America I'd hear a few more.
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