The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder

Rating:
Summary: Important Reading
Review: While on a family vacation, I picked up the new paperback version of Mark Crispin Miller's The Bush Dyslexicon and read it straight through. It's a serious and rigorous consideration of Bush's language in his public pronouncements. It turned out to be a particularly timely read the week I looked at it because Bush had just staged his announcement of the new homeland security dept. [which he had previously said he would not do] in order to upstage FBI agent Crowley's testimony before congress. This was soon followed by the Ashcroft announcement from Moscow about the dirty bomber. All of this was very much in line with the kind of thing Miller pulls out of Bush's rhetorical strategies. The paperback updates the original hardcover with material from the first year of Bush's presidency and post-9/11 -- sadly, it would not be too hard to keep adding material to the book. I particularly liked Miller's point about the extent to which Bush always speaks of values, but never ideals. I would add that Bush's values are always limited to things that most cultures would claim for themselves as well, things like loyalty, virtue, devotion to family, neighborliness. There's nothing unique about America in this regard -- and you could even argue they are stronger in places like rural Italy or maybe even Afghanistan. But distinctive American values centered on materialism never get mentioned in Bush's speeches, although they've clealry central for him in his actual life.

Rating:
Summary: This is what we get...
Review: This is a must read for those that need to know who actually leads this country and a chilling wake-up call for those of us who ignore the signs or continue to stay uninvolved.

I do not think this is "typical liberal bilge" as one reviewer put it; this is Bush in his own words without any distortion or quoting anything out of context.

My only complaint is that some of the views Miller states are not well documented and I think he spends far too much time comparing Bush to Nixon (I think Bush is probably smoother in private than Nixon), but the gist of the book cannot be denied: The American Media allowed Bush to take office without any quibble whatsoever. The essay in the middle of the book (sorry, I don't have my copy with me so don't know the title of it) is worth the purchase price alone and should be required reading for any high school current events or social studies class.

As Bush continues to search for enemies in a war that apparently will never end, I just hope we're around to elect a better candidate next time.

Rating:
Summary: An irrelevant leftist academic whines about W and TV
Review: Thankfully America has an intellectual giant like Mark Crispin Miller to pass judgment on just how vacuously stupid the rest of us were for electing George W. Bush. From his lofty academic perch atop the marble pillars of NYU, Crispin Miller begins the book by promising not just another list of Bushisms, but an objective "ain't it sad" expose of how such a folksy but ignorant individual was elected by a TV addled populace in the first place. Then we are promptly treated to another listing of Bushisms, but this time, footnoted by the all-knowing, all seeing media pundit, Crispin Miller. The book's conclusion: The "say it ain't so" election of George Bush over Al Gore and Ralph Nader (Crispin-Miller's favorite) was due in part to all of those right wing TV news producers. What - the right-wing news media? Is this guy for real?

It would seem that according to Herr Professor Dr. Crispin-Miller, Presidents should have a certain "smart guy" seal of approval. Unfortunately, nobody cares enough to follow people like Crispin Miller around with a video camera and a microphone, waiting for them to commit a gaff that once and for all exposes them as morons. Ultimately, that's what digs at people like Crispin Miller most of all - that so many of us anti-intellectual voters are taken in by the superficiality of TV sound bites, and don't listen to those who REALLY know what's what - really smart guys like him who vote for approved really smart guys like Ralph Nader.

In short, this book can go on the shelf next to Crispin Miller's other works of leftist intellectual snobbery cloaked as media and political insight. Crispin-Miller's next book is an insightful review of how folksy but undereducated Abraham Lincoln somehow managed to succeed as a President despite having only six weeks of formal schooling, none of which occurred at NYU or Johns Hopkins, and minus the glare of television lights.
Thank goodness for the likes of Crispin Miller who
are willing to deconstruct our elections and expose us for the TV addicted [fools] we truly are.

Rating:
Summary: The Bush Dyslexicon: Duh!
Review: Would the person who thinks George Bush is a genius please stand up? We have prizes for you! Ok... that's what I thought. Nobody's standing. We've kindly accepted that Bush is sort of the Forrest Gump of presidents. Yet most people still seem to think that's just A-ok. He's a nice fellow. He's just a little worried we're going to turn into a herd of swine and attack, so he's built a new army to watch over us at home, and he's taking away our rights, and all that, but he's a nice boy.

I think the guy is smarter than we give him credit for. He has all this political stuff memorized and can dodge any question with nonsense that's the envy of a constipated bull. But nobody seems to pay attention to his real record in Texas, the one that ramped its pollution to the top polluter in the US, and gave business the keys to the henhouse, so to speak.

Mark Crispin Miller is not a Bush fan. If you can't read books by people who don't agree with you, and you happen to be a Bush fan, then this book probably won't sit well with you, although arguably you would benefit from it. There is a lot of information in the book, sometimes told ungently, but Miller never stoops to some of the name calling and accusations so common in political screed. He lets Bush do most of the talking, after the first few chapters that tell us the background of the Bush family, and when Bush talks, things get scary. Lots of anecdotes, lots of quotes from lots of people. It's an important book to have just so you get some idea what we really have up there as chief mouthpiece of the paranoid rightwing.

Shooshie

Rating:
Summary: Time to watch closely
Review: Although I got ripped off because I bought this book in an airport instead of Amazon.com, I consider it a good purchase nonetheless. It has been 9 months since 9/11, and it is high time to start looking closely at the Bush Admin. again (or for the first time for those of you who haven't yet started!). The old axiom since JFK beat Nixon 42 years ago was that you have to look attractive and speak smoothly to be elected president in the age of television. If that wasn't bad enough, the situation has changed alarmingly for the worse, as exemplified by Pres. Bush. Perhaps reading Miller's book will help us understand and avoid making even dumber choices for president in the future. We must celebrate intelligence and intellectual curiosity or we are doomed as a nation for the progressive future.

Rating:
Summary: The Bush Dyslexicon
Review: Typical liberal bilge. Not worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: This book is on message
Review: Author Mark Crispin Miller gets (as Bush Sr. might say) the real "message" learned from campaign 2000: that our once vital democracy has been practically transformed into a plutocracy.

Miller traces the short history of television in presidential politics with the recent evolution of the Republican party to show how corporate control of the media has helped the rich dominate our society to a degree not possible before.

Miller writes in a refreshingly vivid, lucid and candid style. His sharp prose is a welcome and needed antidote to the incoherent soundbites and superficial analyses masquerading as serious journalism in today's vapid media culture (especially on TV).

As the spoiled brat son of wealth and privilege, it is perhaps fitting that George W. Bush was put into the highest office of the land by the sort of anti-democractic shenanagans that once upon a time were deployed only in banana republics (or did we just get another taste of this last week in Venezuela?). Miller suggests that Bush benefited both overtly and covertly from a coalition of right-wing factions who, frustrated with the absence of the communist boogie-man, have channeled their considerable energies towards the destruction of their hated "liberal" compatriots (even if -- or especially because -- the left's point of view is vaguely understood by GOP true believers).

Miller's book is a wake up call to the citizens of the U.S. If you are a Leftist, you might find it exhilarating to read words that for much too long were left unwritten. If you are a Conservative, you are challenged to read this book to learn more about the real George W. Bush and the agenda you are supporting. In either case, I think most people who read this book will agree with Miller's assertion that our democracy is currently situated in a very precarious place. The author stresses that the vast majority of us should be very concerned with the issue of balancing the rights of average citizens with the exponentially-expanding power of the privileged few.

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: Highly recommended
Review: Mark Miller has written a superb analysis, not only of Dubya, but of contemporary America.

In witty and eloquent English he dissects the myth of the compassionate and likeable Bush II, and convinlingly shows how the simplistic and biased media coverage of Election 2000 propelled George W. Bush, the anti-thesis of the American Dream, forward and upward towards Election Day.

In this book, Mark Crispin Miller, applying his Sociological Imagination, puts the (s)election of Bush not only in historical context, but also interprets the emergence of this unlikely President in light of broader and deeper changes in contemporary western societies, especially concerning the role of the media.

I highly recommend this book to every politically interested person who wanders how this [person] ever got to be the most powerfull man in the world, and who cares about the basic values our democracies were meant to represent.

Rating:
Summary: Great work by a great cultural critic
Review: This is perhaps the most difinitive critique of our current unelected president. Miller keenly deconstructs Bush's speech in order to define his persona. What emerges is a bleak picture of a man grossly unqualified to be president. Miller also launches a devestatingly lucid critique of our media institutions, electoral process, and democratic possibilities. This is a must read for all of those people concerned with the current state of our democracy. From the pages of this book Mark Crispin Miller emerges as one of our most important cultural and poltical critics. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.