Plastic Turkey (or: is everything symbolic nowadays?)

[found by Googling "plastic turkey" – ok, don't ask…]

Happy Holidays
+++

Stuffed by a plastic turkey

Bush's gesture politics suggest a man seriously worried about his career

Mark Lawson
Saturday December 6, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1101255,00.html

The 1980s movie The Ploughman's Lunch took its title from an early example
of what we have now come to know as spin. Ian McEwan's script took its
central image from the fact that the bread-and-cheese snack that claimed
to link yuppies in pubs to their ancestors who toiled on the soil was an
invention of the contemporary advertising and catering trades. In Richard
Eyre's film, this fraudulent food became a metaphor for political lying
and pretence at the time of the Falklands war.

If anyone makes a similar film about the attack on Iraq, the title would
now have to be The Plastic Turkey. In a revelation certain to be taught at
schools of democracy and journalism for years to come, it has been
revealed that the apparently appetising turkey that President Bush carried
towards beaming troops last week in Baghdad had been genetically modified
to a degree that would lead even the most profit-hungry farmers to
protest. The bird was the kind of model used by butchers and Hollywood
set-dressers.

Following this disclosure, the president is, unlike his political prop,
stuffed: with a gap in the storyboards for his re-election commercials. A
picture intended to say to viewers "The Eagle Has Landed", in fact spelled
out: "This Bird Never Flew."

The fakery went further. The hoax roast in the president's hands cannot
even be claimed as a symbolic stand-in for the steaming birds that were
actually served. Reports say that the US troops were given airline-style
meals of pre-packaged meat. And the pretend chef had flown to Baghdad in
an Air Force One that filed a fake flight-plan, pretending to be a small
corporate jet.

The latter act - though embarrassing for a politician who promised to end
the easy lying of the Clinton years - can probably just about be excused
as security. But the affair of the plastic turkey can only be attributed
to insecurity.

Although the image of George Bush, until recently, was of a man who could
do whatever he wanted in both America and the world, recent events have
suggested a man seriously worried about both his image and his career. The
president seems to have entered a phase of gesture politics, and the
gestures are those of a man who, while still swimming vigorously, has
suddenly come to accept the possibility of drowning.

Apart from risking his life to deliver a stunt turkey to the Baghdad mess,
the president is now set to revive the US space programme: it's rumoured
that Nasa will, this month, announce new missions to the moon. And a man
accused of imperial arrogance has even made a significant concession to
the rival powerbase of Europe by abandoning protectionist steel tariffs.
It can be argued that this is a cosmetic move - because Bush had already
lost the votes of the steel states in the US - but the move indicates a
politician much less happy than he once was to be seen as isolationist.

Even during an American election cycle, the apparent decision to aim for
the moon is surprising. The original lunar programme grew out of the
bipolar political world of the cold war. Kennedy was only interested in
landing in the Sea of Tranquillity because of the fear that the Russians
might splash down first. Now, with only one superpower, it will be not a
space race but a space lap-of-honour or training run for America.

It's a measure of Bush's reputation that environmentalists have already
accused him of planning to rob the moon of mineral deposits or light. But
there's another possibility. A pattern is emerging in which the Bush White
House - like a child hiding its face at a bad memory - seeks to replace a
negative image with a positive one.

The original Gulf war photo-op planned for use in the 2004 election
campaign was the commander-in-chief landing a jet on an aircraft carrier
that flew the banner: Mission Accomplished. Now that Mission Impossible
might be a more fitting message to fly from US ships, a substitute image
was needed for the militaristic bits of the ads. This was provided by
Dubya as carver-in-chief on Thanksgiving Day. The mooted new moonshots are
calculated to wipe from the collective memory the images of the Challenger
disaster.

If the president were to use the plastic turkey of Baghdad in commercials
now, his opponents would make a real meal of it, so Bush 2004 needs some
other photo-ops. Perhaps the new Nasa plans indicate that he intends to
disguise Air Force One as a rocket and stage a photo-shoot on the moon.

Whatever the details, the message is clear. Though he still lacks anything
as pesky as a plausible Democrat opponent, Dubya is starting to fear that
his administration may become the second one-term turkey served up by the
Bush dynasty.

+++