One of my pet hates regarding the mainstream media is the way that personalities in the limelight are swiftly and forcefully reduced to archetypes, or caricatures. If you ask anybody what words spring to mind when they consider George W Bush as a person, it’s a fair bet that the answer will be at least partially derogatory. I certainly won’t contest the point that some or even most of the criticisms made of the US President are valid ones, but I also think that like anyone, there is much more to Bush than meets the eye initially. When people like George Bush, or Harbajhan Singh, or Amy Winehouse are attacked by commentators who don’t know them personally or seek to engage with them intellectually, one wonders whether they are really succeeding in identifying genuine flaws in their targets, or merely flaws that appear in the caricatures of the targets presented by the media. Do we usually score a hit on the person we are criticising, or are we merely connecting with their shadow, reflected grotesquely on the wall by the flash bulbs of the paparazzi?
What we do notice is that every now and again, someone has the courage (or the sheer bloody-mindedness) to challenge the media’s publicly accepted caricature of someone, and attempt to paint an altogether different picture of them and where they are coming from. Enter Bob Geldof. Geldof has written a number of pieces for TIME Magazine reflecting on President Bush’s achievements in Africa, and his good will tour there. To be honest, the former musician really does handle everyone’s least favourite president with kid gloves, but on the other hand, I challenge anyone to decry reported results like these:
The great unacknowledged story of America in Africa didn’t immediately originate with this President (John Kerry and Bill Frist initiated legislation in 2002 to conbat the continent’s AIDS epidemic). But it was accelerated hugely by him, increased by him, argued for by him and monitored by him. It has saved millions upon millions of lives and healed broken bodies; more than 1.5 million Africans are on lifesaving antiretrovirals.
…
Unusually, it is being done deftly, slowly and gently with due respect to the dignity of those it seeks to help. There are no votes in helping the poor of Africa, but Bush did it anyway.
It is these sorts of facts that don’t fit quite neatly into the universalist portraits of Bush that often win through in the mainstream media and in popular critiques. Yes, his administration made a terrible, bloody mess with foreign policy in Iraq and with its hawkish “axis of evil” rhetoric. It is patently true that he does not have a way with words like one might wish of a leader of the free world. The temptation to intellectually shrink Bush (and personalities like him) and what he stands for into a tiny caricature of the real person is overwhelming, but I think, for the sake of efficacy, we should all challenge ourselves to resist. There is more to our old mate Dubya than meets the eye, and more to his often horrifically bumbling but not entirely destructive administration than meets the eye.
As there is, I am quite sure, to virtually every other person presented to us through the media’s regressively simplifying lens.
ELSEWHERE: Another TIME piece from Geldof featuring Bush is online here.
Tags: AIDS, Bob Geldof, George Bush, TIME Magazine
[...] Guy Beres applauds the self-promoting Bob Geldof’s caricature-busting sympathetic view of George Bush. [...]