Parallel spins

Thanks to Ross for tipping us off to this one:

"One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally."

The article goes on to quote Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman as saying, "This was purely an example."

Another Bush advisor, speaking anonymously, stated that Bush spoke of the Middle East because he wanted to convey the idea in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands."

I post this here because when I read the article, the excuses that Bush's handlers made up for him reminded me so, so much of something that the Slay administration's spin machine would try to use, i.e. "When Slay said that he would improve the schools and regain all the accreditation points that have been lost under his administration, he was just using an example. He wanted people to understand. He didn't mean it literally."

No, it hasn't happened yet, but that spin just sounded so familiar to me, so much like something that the mayor's highly paid PR firm would try to offer up. Both the Bush machine and the Slay machine have been shredding public schools, but reporting it as if it was a good thing ("No Child Left Behind" and a wad of SLPS PR spending*, while violence in the schools continues to be a problem and SLPS jobs keep getting cut). Bush refers to increasing allowable pollutants as Clean Air, and Slay positively spins an increase in violent crime. And both of them will tell you that the economy is great, no matter how it's doing (Seriously, with all the jobs lost in the Federated buyout of Famous Barr, you think at least they wouldn't brag that we're being called the new Midwestern HQ of Macy's--what a joke!).

Up is down, down is up, and quality of life is simply an advertising battle.

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* "If we learn to do well, we won't need a PR campaign. If not, all the PR in the world would just make us look foolish."--Bill Haas at the January 17, 2006 School Board meeting.