The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder

by Mark Crispin Miller

Book Overview

The Bush Dyslexicon is a raucously funny ride--whether it's Bush envisioning a foreign-handed foreign policy or Miller skewering vociferous cultural conservatives like William Bennett and Lynne Cheney for their silence on Bush's particular West Texas version of Ebonics. But there is also a strong undercurrent of outrage. Only because our elections have become so dependent on television and its emphatic emptiness, says Miller, could a man of such sublime...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393322963
• ISBN13: 9780393322965
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 418 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

More than just the politics of the moment

I have both editions of this book; the earlier one and the one published just this year. The newer edition is much improved from the new material, but the message is the same.This appears to be a vastly misunderstood work. I understand that some bookstores stack this in the "humor" or "political humor" (if they have one) sections. That's like placing "Animal Farm" in the children's section because it has talking pigs and horses. Personally, I don't find disabilities amusing (Bush's no less than any others) and Miller seems to make it clear he feels the same way. Also, the joke has been running on too long by this time to be funny.The other mistake is that this is simply an attack by a liberal professor against the conservative Bush president. Yes, Miller is obviously a liberal and does attack Bush with a near lethal precision of insight and logic -- the kind Peggy Noonan wishes she had -- but "Dyslexicon" is every bit as much about the rest of us as it is about Bush. It is about how our superficial media allows a creature such as Bush to exist and even flourish.Regardless of how you feel about the current president Bush, reading Dyslexicon is very instructive in understanding the psychology of others, particularly politicians. That's a useful skill in this day and age.

A revealing expose by a razor-sharp writer

Where Miller could have opted for the easy laughs and compiled a list of Bush's oratory gaffes, appending them with a few pompous put-downs, he has infact used Bush's verbal foul-ups merely as tools with which to support a much deeper and more unsettling observation.Miller paints a lucid and disturbing picture of 21st century America, where a ubiquitous media culture promotes the dumbing-down of society and scorns intellectualism, instructive debate, creative vision and radical argument. Television, he says, exists solely to entertain, not educate, within safe, predictable parameters. Its agenda reserves no place for florid speech, mental provocation or inspirational ideals; instead, news and advertising are delivered in easily digestable chunks that deem obsolete any input on behalf of the viewer. The viewing masses are assailed with the familiar and the comfortable; advertisers reassure us they have our every whim catered for as long as we keep the cash flowing, and Hollywood celebrity scandals take the edge off any serious issues that might threaten to force us to form opinions or reassess our lives.Moreover, Miller claims it is this brain-dead media culture that has cushioned Bush's rise to power - a culture that dispensed with intelligent debate and adroit character exposition during the presidential campaign and instead focussed on trivialities such as the candidates' likeability, photogenic profile and ability to keep the viewers from switching channels. It was no wonder, says Miller, that Gore was labelled "elitist" and lambasted for his dry, lengthy dissection of the Dingell/Norwood Bill, while Bush was hoisted onto a pedestal for feigning scorn over the more complex issues and feebly mumbling empty rhetoric like, "I think the administration needs to do what they think is right".According to the author, it was not necessary, and still isn't, for George Bush to expound on any of his policies in anything approaching legible syntax. Television needs simple soundbites; and incoherent peculiarities such as "I believe what I believe is true" are founded on exactly the same anti-intellectual level that the American media culture has championed. Furthermore, Miller explains, there has been a drastic shift by the big media honchos to the far right of the political spectrum for purposes of self-preservation, ensuring the safety and approval of an administration that protects and defends their massive salaries so proficiently. It is for these reasons that not only does the idiot box manage to blatantly forgive Dubya's indiscretions, lies and deceptions, it actually forgets them.Miller's final chapter is quite daring in its assertions and yet extremely hard to discredit. In it he puts forward the concept of the GOP's survival requiring the existence of an enemy, real or imagined. During the Cold War this was easily maintained; once the USSR fell so spectacularly, and the Gulf War was wrapped up, the party had to search closer to home, and found an i

Why elect a doofus as president

In 1972, according to J. H. Hatfield in his book 'Fortunate Son,' the 26-year-old George Bush was arrested for possession of cocaine in Houston; as Hatfield pointed out, a friendly judge erased the arrest and conviction from the public record. True or false ? Take your pick. At best, it's an example of how a boozing prodigal son can turn his life around. He's not the only one. To cite a minor example, after he underwent a religious awakening similar to Bush, Navajo Nation President Kelsey Begaye went from an alcohol-clouded life on Skid Row in Los Angeles to Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council and then president of the Navajo Nation. Naturally, Bush gets somewhat upset when anyone cites the cocaine charge. This book cites an interview with Seth Mnookin of the magazine Brill's Content in which Bush said Hatfield was condemned ". . . . for writing the story." He didn't criticize Hatfield for getting the story wrong, for making it up, for not checking facts or for obvious malice -- he criticized him ". . . . for writing the story." If nothing else, it shows Bush's sloppiness in his use of language. It is the major complaint against Bush, that he has an undisciplined sloppy approach to everything he does. After the attack on the World Trade Center, he announced a "crusade" against the Arabs -- using the one word, crusade, that is certain to stiffen Arab resistance. When he went to the Far East, he promised to look the Asian leaders directly in the eye -- using the precise image that is a challenge to a confrontation. So, why was Bush elected ? After eight years of poll-driven Clinton decisions, the public didn't want a cerebral activist president. Bush was the only alternative, and in the fall of 2000 his sloppiness seemed charming and harmless. Yet, in times of crisis and tough decisions, this sloppiness causes trouble. As this book points out, on page after page, Bush is clearly a real-life Forrest Gump elevated far beyond the realm of fuzzy warm feelings. In the movie, Gump was always a slightly befuddled observer at great events; in real life, consistently as this book points out, Bush is a tongue-tied fumbler at the heart of great events. It's not nearly as heart-warming as a typical American movie with its syrupy happy ending. Bush's other fault, as the book makes clear, is his fundamentalist religious faith that reflects a cold righteousness that chills anyone who fails to accept his tenets. We are now in a war against terrorism, a war in which we need Christians, Jews and Muslims to join an ecumenical campaign against fundamentalist radicals who exploit religion for their own ends. In 1775, Samuel Johnson noted "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Today, based on the actions of religious extremists -- from people who blow up abortion clinics to those who fly aircraft into buildings -- Johnson would surely say "Religion is the last refuge of scoundrels." Yet, the book isn't really an attack on Bush.

Don't misunderestimate this book!

"What's not fine is, rarely is the question asked, are, is our children learning." - George W. Bush, Jan. 2000Media critic Mark Crispin Miller has written a new book titled The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder. Although it brims with outrageous examples of Bush's inability to speak meaningful sentences (e.g., "Laura and I don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis."), this book is not so much about Bush's illiteracy as it is about how the corporate media cherishes him and his utter lack of ideas. Miller believes that Bush's problem is deeper than mere dyslexia, or what he calls Bush's "West Texas ebonics." It's deeper, too, than simple ignorance. Bush's problem is that he's an ANTI-intellectual, and thus he plays very well on television. Although an excellent advertising medium, television detests reasoned discourse and instead focuses attention on the visual and the trivial, such as Ross Perot's big ears, Al Gore's robotic gestures, or any woman's hair style. Writes Miller: "The networks' journalistic stars go on and on and on about the politicians' failure or success at pleasing--or at not displeasing--viewers. ...such interminable yakking tells us nothing, dwelling on details of bearing, posture, voice, and makeup, instead of dealing with what anybody did, said, or failed to say." Put another way, our TV culture reduces "all discussion to the level of the taste-test, wherein 'likeability' is all that counts."Thus, a smirking ignoramus who couldn't name any world leaders during his presidential campaign actually became a darling of the media, whose reporters and pundits continue to coddle him like a slow child, virtually never throwing him any curves nor attempting to pin him down with pointed or complex questions. In a typically wry passage, Miller observes: "Thus, Bush himself is a big-time beneficiary of what he likes to call 'the soft bigotry of low expectations.'"Particularly galling to Miller is the Right's attempt to spin Bush's ignorance as an indication that he's a man of the people, like an Andrew Jackson or an Abraham Lincoln. (Republican Representative J.C. Watts actually introduced Bush at a campaign rally in South Carolina by shouting proudly, "You don't have to be smart to be president!") Miller reminds us that Bush hardly dragged himself up from common conditions. Rather, he partied his way through school, squandering rich educational opportunities at Andover and Yale, two highly competitive institutions which never would have accepted him--much less graduated him--without his family's intercession. Accordingly, Miller dubs Bush the anti-Lincoln, "one who, instead of learning eagerly in humble circumstances, learned almost nothing at the finest institutions in the land.""And I see Bill Buckley is here tonight, fellow Yale man. We go way back, and we have a lot in common. Bill wrote a book at Yale--I read one." - George W Bush, Oct. 2000Miller's book

By George, I Think Miller's Got It!

Given our "Commander-in-Chief's" well-documented tendency to butcher the English language, it would have been easy for some humorist with professorial tendencies to write a book making fun of him. George W. Bush's egregious "sins of syntax" certainly seem deserving of such an embarrasing public penance. A book like that would probably be a good deal of fun to read, and everyone would be talking about it at cocktail parties for at least a week. Certainly it would be an easy book to write, a quick book to read, and instantly forgettable. Fortunately for the literate and poltically conscious among us, "The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder" is far more substantial than that. Author Mark Crispin Miller is no hack political satirist going for the quick buck and the cheap laugh; he is a politically conscious Professor from New York University, a concerned American citizen who just happens to have been blessed with a genuine talent for wry and insightful humor. It should be emphasized, for the benefit of Bush supporters who might bristle at the title, that this book is no smear job. True to the academic tradition, Miller's book is a thoroughly researched, and meticulously detailed work. Those familiar with his earlier work will of course recognize the rapier wit and keen analytical sensibilities that he brings to bear on all his subject matter. The uninitiated will be delighted to find the book accesible to a wide audience of readers; instead of stuffy "academese," the book is written in elegant, often witty prose. But for all its wit, the book does address some very serious issues concerning our "first unelected president." Aside from the more obvious "language issues," there are even more disturbing matters to consider. Among Miller's chief concerns are Bush's apparent ignorance of world history, American history, geography, foreign policy, and even the day-to-day operations of the American government! Miller's perspective on these matters is facinating and powerful. In several sections he drives home his points by invoking the words and spirits of previous presidents, a most effective literary tactic. Without revealing any juicy plot details, this reviewer would suggest that one of the over-arching lessons of Miller's book is that these are issues to be taken seriously; as such, it is in our best interests as Americans to take this president seriously. He is not quite the airhead he would like us to think he his. As Bush himself might put it, we "misunderestimate" him at our own peril. Those who read this book will surely be glad that they did; and when they are finished reading it they will no doubt want to thank Professor Miller for his fair warnings.