Satire vs. Reality

Monday during Bush’s photo-op in New Orleans, a prankster posing as a deputy assistant secretary of the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development addressed a conference there on public housing, announcing that the government was reversing policy and would halt plans to demolish thousands of housing units.
The imposter identified himself as Andy Bichlbauer, a name used by a group of activist performance artists who delivered a bogus address to a WTO conference in Austria, were behind a “vote auction” site that purported to connect big money political donors directly to voters, and are suspects in numerous pie killings.
Such surrealism applied to public affairs can lead to vertigo and nausea when the rubes (us) realize that they’ve been afflicted with ‘dumbnesia’ and missed vital clues that they were being taken.
Consider Bush the candidate next to Bush the President. In the debates he spoke the good conservative lines, I may have fallen for it except for the fact that he’d been my governor for years. I remember when he appeared on TV before the Carla Faye Tucker execution and read the right lines about equal justice and personal responsibility, but he had that deer in headlights look, plus his usual problems with reading aloud; I was underwhelmed.After six years of this happy bullshit, the pranksters and imposters are starting to look credible.