Rating: 
Summary: Great idea but not a great book
Review: I confess I may not have purchased this book if I didn't recognize the author's name. Mark Crispin Miller was a film professor at a Baltimore university when I was an undergrad well over a decade ago. I enrolled in his lecture course and he helped make Stanley Kubrick a little less inscrutable, so I figured I'd give him a chance to deconstruct George W. Bush as well.The "Dyslexicon" is three books in one. The center book, of course, is a lengthy compendium of the unelected President's misquotes. They're helpfully indexed by political issue. There are all your old favorites ("Families is where... wings take dream"). There are several quotes from Bush's own campaign autobiography ("A Charge To Keep") which doesn't sound as if it was written by Bush at all. Since the book contradicts his own views on turmoil at Yale in the late '60s, he probably didn't. Most important, I think, are the lengthy passages from the three debates with Al Gore in late 2000 that probably won Bush the election (or rather, put him in a position to get selected by the Supreme Court). For example, seeing in print how Gore dismantles Bush on issues such as affirmative action still had me scratching my head, just as I scratched my head in 2000 when the media declared that Bush "won" the debates. The quotes, as I said, are the core of the book. Around that is a lengthy media-science discourse on television news and how America as a nation selects their presidents. This part of the book is a polemic, highly political, and I confess that I wasn't 100% on board with Miller's arguments. However, his case is compellingly stated. The point of publishing a book like this is to raise issues and engage discourse. On that level it is a far higher quality of discussion than you would see from, say, Regnery Press, which is the preferred platform for those who spread Bushisms. The final portion of the revised book is the post-9/11 material. This book came out shortly after Bush was inaugurated, but was updated rather sensibly to show the changing focus of Bush's administration and policies. Miller deals well with the canonization of Bush after the tragedy, as spun by Ari Fleischer and Karl Rove. Less successful is his final argument, presented on pages 325-332 as "The Reason Why". First of all, you don't want to go around quoting Noam Chomsky to explain why 9/11 happened. There is a middle ground between the Chomsky and Bush views as to why America was selected for attack, but Miller doesn't stake it out. Are these the opinions Miller would have endorsed had Al Gore been President in 2001? In the end, though, Miller does an important job dissecting Bush's policies. America was sold a bill of goods, electing the most radical President in a century, believing him to be a centrist. Miller presents his unvarnished words, which are at turns laugh-out-loud funny, and deeply disturbing. The middle book is the one you need to own, and the supporting essays are worth considering as well.
Rating:
Summary: This book explains a lot.
Review: I read recently about a Houston high school student with a B average who, enrolling at the University of Houston, could not make it through her freshman year because the courses were too difficult. She dropped out and entered a trade school. I also read recently that the two states in the country that have the lowest requirement for proficiency on state tests are Colorado and Texas. To be considered proficient in those states a student need only achieve a reading score in the 13th percentile. That's the bottom thirteen percent. I don't know what happened in Colorado, but I have a pretty good idea about Texas. The state tests in Texas were first administered to Governor Bush and continually dumbed down until the test writers came up with a version the guv was able to pass. That's the one that's used to test Texas students.
Rating: 
Summary: Happy are the morons!
Review: It took me longer to read this book than I had originally anticipated. This is because I found myself re-reading in complete disbelief so many of the inane ramblings of the functionally illiterate current occupant of the White House (does he really deserve the honor of the title, "President"?). It has been said that somewhere in Texas, a village (Crawford, perhaps?) is missing its idiot. I think if one were to look in Washington DC on Pennsylvania Avenue, one would be sure to find him.
In reading Miller's book, I believe that the laughter elicited by the many verbal gaffes of the current White House occupant arises from the fact that many people are just outright incredulous that one so inarticulate, illiterate, and ignorant could be elected for a second term to the highest political office in our land (although it is true that he was not elected to his first term as the chief occupant of the White House).
Many of Mr. Bush's malapropisms will elicit a chuckle or even a guffaw. Others will just leave you scratching you head -- what on Earth was he saying? And yet others belie the true intentions of the man (it is especially revealing to read "Bush on the Couch" by Dr Justin A. Frank along with this book).
The real meat of Miller's analysis comes toward the end of this book. Here he ascribes Mr. Bush's ascendancy to the office of President to the Media's bias, not to the left as is often stated, but to the extreme right. This should come as no surprise to anybody -- the major television broadcast corporations are, after all, a part of the plutocratic system that stands to benefit from the extreme pro-big business, anti-middle class neo-conservative policies of the Bush ideologues. Hence, the media that should have encouraged a sense of public outrage at the mockery made of the Constitution in the 2000 Presidential election, simply looked the other way and themselves became a party to the greatest affront to democracy in the history of our great nation. I suppose that we shouldn't allow pesky little details such as the United States Constitution to interfere with the Bush agenda. That very same media machine, by the way, was all too willing to hang Bill Clinton in effigy because of a bad real estate deal and a sexual faux pas that should have been treated as a matter of personal morality rather than national policy.
But why do so many in the American middle and working class buy this guy? This is truly paradoxical given that so many of the policies of this administration have worked so much to the disadvantage of America's middle class. I believe that the answer lies in the fact that the majority of Americans have simply become lazy -- too lazy to involve themselves in the political process in any meaningful way. It is far easier, after all, to listen to the ranting diatribes of religio-facist gas bags such as Limbaugh, Hannity, or Coulter who all spew the same toxic brand of pseudo-patriotic swill, than it is to devote the energy and effort required to think for oneself. So it seems that the American majority (51 per cent, at least) has, like the current White House occupant, followed the path of least resistance and allowed itself become functionally illiterate. What is even more alarming, however, is that so many Americans now seem to enthusiastically follow the lead of their esteemed Occupant in Chief in taking great pride in their ignorance. And Miller correctly warns us that if this trend continues, we stand to lose our democracy.
After reading Miller's book it should come as no surprise that the current occupant of the White House has under-funded so many of his promised education initiatives. After all, the most powerful enemy of any demagogue is a well educated electorate.
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Read
Review: Miller's brilliant (if, yes, from-the-left) dissection of the President's manner of speech is ammo for those fighting Bush's supposedly compassionate fiscal and environmental policies, which target lower-income Americans and, in some ways, impoverish us all. If they can forgive some tart gibes from the author, truly humane conservatives who read this book may find themselves chilled by the way Bush's mind seems to work. As Miller argues, the President is far from stupid, and his troubles with the language should not be laughed off, as Bush himself now attempts to do. Rather, they should be seen as one way to ascertain what the man cares about-as opposed to what he claims to care about. As for the charge of elitism posted on this site, Miller's writing is lively and accessible to a general audience, though the writer is unapologetically intellectual. It's not elitist to value education over ignorance, thinking over thoughtlessness. What's elitist is putting someone in charge of a company or a country just because he's well-born (with the fundraising capacity that implies). And to those who took the time to post "reviews" saying they refuse to read the book: This kind of ignorance-on-purpose is what the country's ruling class is literally banking on.
Rating:
Summary: An Amazingly Well-written and Well-researched Book
Review: My title says it all. It is too bad Republicans, for the most part, don't read. If nothing else the preface alone would be a learning experience.
One day the United States will revert back to a democratic country and then this book might be required reading in every high school civics and government class. If it were now, America would be looking forward to a much brighter future.
Rating: 
Summary: Smiley, Cheer Up!
Review: Not to worry, President Bush will be re-elected in November and, I'm sure, will continue to tickle you pink with grammatical goofs. Afganistan and Irag are progressing toward democracy and you'll still be able to cash your government entitlements. Saddam Hussein has been captured but you personally are free to bash christians in our country. The U.S. will continue to be the greatest nation on the face of the earth but you'll continue to be free to advocate its takeover by the U.N. All of this should make you happy!
Rating:
Summary: This book is a great reason to turn off the TV and read...
Review: Prof. Miller's latest book, The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder, certainly will be read by all manner of lefties with great amusement, since it is a rich source of the current President's verbal stumblings. It won't be read by conservatives, although the extreme right wing should buy and read it--that way, for at least once, they will be fully informed about an object of their derision. However, all should be attracted less by the book's title than its subtitle, for therein lies the true subject of the book. That national disorder, made manifest in the last election, is the intellectual sleeping sickness being induced in the electorate by newspaper chains and television networks less and less dependent on real journalism. Miller describes, in detail and by copious examples, the symbiosis between media and politicians which has ultimately been destructive to rational political discourse in our country, focusing particularly on the means by which the popular media repeatedly attempted in the last election to divert the public's attention from the issues and debate of the issues. He also examines the sort of tricks of the lens by which the media, and Bush's team, sought to turn a national election into a high-school popularity contest, and an intellectually disengaged ideologue bereft of job skills into the 43rd President. For every person who has wondered, not only in this last Presidential campaign, but in the last twenty or thirty years, why the political landscape seems so absent of the statesmen of the past, and why so many in our current crop of leaders seem either fatuous or out of touch with the public, I greatly recommend this book. It's a genuinely serious attempt to define a national malaise and to offer at least a partial cure for an ailing democracy.
Rating:
Summary: Required Reading for Anyone Who Steps Into the Voting Booth
Review: The nuclear (or in the case of George W Bush "nu-kew-lar" )football that can launch an cataclysmic end of our planet is within a 3-second determination. Bush's lack of knowledge and his pride of former, should give pause to anyone who'd like to see their grandchildren in this lifetime. When you superimpose what the author so eloquently writes with what W is capble of doing, and has already done to the repution of the US, it is truly sobering.
Rating:
Summary: Required Reading for Anyone Who Steps Into the Voting Booth
Review: The nuclear (or in the case of George W Bush "nu-kew-lar" )football that can launch an cataclysmic end of our planet is within a 3-second determination. Bush's lack of knowledge and his pride of former, should give pause to anyone who'd like to see their grandchildren in this lifetime. When you superimpose what the author so eloquently writes with what W is capble of doing, and has already done to the repution of the US, it is truly sobering.
Rating:
Summary: No Laughing Matter, But It's Funny
Review: There's a whole corny-copia of bushisms to choose from, but my personal favorite has got to be "Is our children learning?" First runner up is W's wise assessment that most imports come from abroad. You can get most of these malapropisms on T-shirts and joke-a-day calendars, but Mark Crispin Miller picks them apart, explains their origins and dissects them as armchair anthropologist. One may be alarmed at the over-the-top arrogance of Bush, his extraordinary privileged son's viewpoints
and lack of knowledge or concern for ordinary working people.
But what is most startling, without requiring much help from Miller, is the rock-solid conclusion that Bush - as evidenced
by his ongoing losing battle with the English language - has read virtually nothing throughout his life, and that probably includes the Constitution of the United States. You know, the one he's supposed to protect and defend. Clearly, one can reasonably come to believe that the person who was elected or seclected president is not the person who is actually running the affairs of the nation, or more accurately, running them into the ground. How on earth did we wind up with such an empty kettle as front man for the ultra-ultra-flat-earth Far Right? There's enough blame to go around, but the media comes in for some well-deserved licks. It's a good, breezy read for all ages, funny as hell, but sad in the realization that it's non-fiction.
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