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i do not see how the question of the construction of bush as president--which would entail thinking about the strategies of pooling the press, controlling/shaping information etc. on the part of the white house, the linkages between the white house and conservative think tanks and right media and so forth--can be linked to the question of whether folk think bush is himself a nitwit or not.
the former, that of bush as signifier, is more sociological, while the latter, that of whether bush as an individual is a nitwit or not, is at the most aesthetic (do people have to reconcile the evidence concerning bush as human being possessed of x intellectual skills, etc..to the fact that he holds the office of president? does it cause a level of dissonance unacceptable to many to consider that a nitwit could be president? these questions would extend to the construction of ronald reagan as well, who posed parallel questions--but would necessarily also involve the history of the construction of the person of the president at the mythological/public level, particularly in a television environment) and at worst arbitrary (a question of your personal politics--if you oppose bush, you think one way, if you support him another--so the matter is really just one of preference and not about bush at all).
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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