There might have been a time in my life when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton weren't running for President, though I don't seem to remember it anymore. Had I ever heard the term "superdelegates"? Did I truly appreciate the difference between a primary and a caucus? Did I really think I was going to watch this much MSNBC? I wonder if I had ever been naive enough to think that this contest was a simple competition for votes, and that he or she with the most would win. I must have been so young and innocent back then—I miss those days.
In January 2007, Clinton declared her official candidacy, though she had been ramping up for months, if not years. A few weeks later, Obama declared. For nearly a year until the Iowa caucus, Clinton was noted in the press as the "presumptive nominee." She was way ahead of her party rivals in the national polls. Republican candidates bought into this inevitability logic too, eagerly attacking Clinton as they made their own respective cases for the GOP nomination.
Then Clinton began to stumble, and Obama began to rise. He would win Iowa. She came roaring back in New Hampshire. Alas came Super Tuesday, which had been designed to deliver decisive results so that a clear nominee could emerge and start focusing on the general election. Not so. Super Tuesday was a split decision. Obama goes on to win 11 contests in a row, assuming front-runner status. Then comes the Ohio primary and the Texas "primacaucus." (A "primacaucus"? Are you kidding me? I think my brain just exploded.) Everything was to be decided by Ohio and Texas, unless of course, Clinton won them both, which she did. So nothing was decided. All eyes turned to Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, and Indiana, and ...Puerto Rico? What about Guam? I sure hope the Guamese appreciate their ever-increasing role of importance in this process. Or are they Guamans? Or Guamish? Maybe they're Guamanians.
Meanwhile, Florida and Michigan Democrats tried to figure out how to redo their primaries, which had been discounted by the Democratic National Committee for having held their elections too soon, in clear violation of party rules. Both campaigns have also been aggressively courting the superdelegates, which Clintonites are hoping will swing the race in her favor. I sometimes imagine these nearly 800 party leaders and activists wearing blue superhero costumes with "SD" emblazoned on their capes as they swooped in to rescue the second-place finisher from having to finish in second. I saw an interview with one such superdelegate, a 21-year-old named Jason Rae (not wearing his superhero costume), who gleefully recounted his lunch with Chelsea Clinton and her effort to win his support for her mother.
Maybe we still don't know enough about the differences between these two candidates. Perhaps a debate or two, or 25, would help delineate their miniscule, and in some cases arcane, policy discrepancies. If the debates can't accomplish this goal, thousands of television ads may illuminate the choice. To cover these costs, the campaigns have raised and spent a staggering sum, now in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And yet the race goes on. Forever. It has the potential to drag on to the Democratic National Convention in Denver at the end of August. It's as if we're in quadruple overtime. Both teams are exhausted, and quite frankly, so are their fans.
Despite the drudgery, excess, and apparent futility of such a long process, there is also something profoundly revealing about it. The issues do get dissected. Voters have plenty of time to carefully discern their choices. In fact, the campaigns reveal more than perhaps they intended. In a contest where policy differences are negligible, the styles and personalities of the candidates take on a larger significance.
The perception that Hillary Clinton would do just about anything to win has borne itself out to be true. Her own staffers boasted of a "kitchen sink" strategy to defeat Obama in Texas and Ohio, leveling any scurrilous charge they could think of in order to tarnish his lofty image. In part, they succeeded, and raised the specter that these attacks could be fodder for the Republican strategy against Obama in the fall. Aside from relying on the superdelegates to win the nomination, there's even been talk by the Clinton campaign of poaching the already-pledged delegates from the Obama camp. At one point, both Hillary and Bill Clinton arrogantly suggested that Obama would make a good running mate, despite the fact that Obama, not Clinton, was and is the indisputable front runner. This was a political calculation aimed at undecided voters who could choose Clinton thinking they might get Obama as well. It was also a cynical attempt to deny reality.
For Obama, the campaign has functioned as a rite of passage. His ability to withstand a barrage of attacks from both Clinton and the GOP will ultimately determine his ability to weather an even more grueling general election against John McCain. He will have been tested, which could blunt the charge by some of his critics that he somehow isn't ready to take the heat. If the overriding concern for most Democrats is victory in November, then Obama's battle scars will be proof of his resilience, even if they do expose some of his electoral vulnerabilities.
This enduring campaign has also forced Obama, who presents himself as a post-racial candidate, to deal directly with the issue of race in America. At first, it seemed that his former pastor's incendiary remarks would prove it impossible for Obama to transcend the age-old racial divide. He took this political crisis and turned it into an opportunity, addressing the legacy of racism and race relations in a way no other modern politician has ever done.
Despite what we've learned from their extended time on the campaign trail, I've begun to wonder about the candidates' jobs as US Senators. Specifically, who's doing them while they spend every waking moment running for President? Do Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have to do double the work? Obama even admitted that campaigning had prevented him from fulfilling his important responsibilities as chairman of a subcommittee that deals with NATO and could address the issue of increasing their involvement in Afghanistan. "I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven't had oversight hearings on Afghanistan," Obama said.
What about Obama and Clinton's annual salaries of $165,200? Should the taxpayers have to pay them for a job they're obviously not doing? If the average worker took two years off one job to go interview for another, it's likely that they wouldn't have their original job to go back to. Most problematic is the notion that these candidates, including McCain, are spending all this time talking about what they'll do to fix the nation's problems when they could be in the Senate actually doing something about them.
Theoretically, either Obama or Clinton will eventually win the Democratic Party nomination. The general election will finally take place this November, and the new President will be sworn in on January 20th 2009.
And, on January 21th, the campaign for 2012 will begin.
When the original incarnation of the television show American Gladiators made its debut in 1989, a man named Bush was President of the United States. A year later, he invaded Iraq. A year after that, the country was in a full-blown recession. When the show went off the air in 1996, we had a guy named Clinton who was about to plunge the nation into the meaningless psychodrama that would come to envelop his presidency. In January 2008, American Gladiators made its triumphant return. This time it's being categorized as a reality TV show, and it airs in prime time on NBC. A second Bush now occupies the Oval Office; he's waged another war in Iraq, and there's talk of another recession. Meanwhile, America's ultimate reality show, the Clintons, are once again circling the White House. Is this what they call deja vu?
To be fair, there are some significant differences between the first era of American Gladiators and the second. The latest Iraq War is far more difficult, far longer, and promises a far more uncertain future. Today's economy isn't just shrinking; millions of Americans are losing their homes, and along with this, their primary investment. And then there's the scariest laundry list of current problems I could add in a single paragraph: lack of affordable quality health care, an environmental crisis, a crumbling infrastructure, political corruption, Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, an overextended military, bitter cultural division, and a general sense of helplessness and depression about what to do about any of this. But rather than address these seemingly insurmountable obstacles, let's get back to the show.
American Gladiators puts forth a fairly simple conceit, as stated in the opening voice over: "Ordinary men and women battle head to head against some of the greatest athletes in the world." Following a series of cartoonish challenges involving muscle-bound gladiator freaks, the players then face off against each other in a spectacular final event known as the "Eliminator," which includes swimming under fire and climbing up an inclined travelator moving in reverse. Imagine something between a campy James Bond torture sequence and the tone of the film The Running Man, starring Governor Schwarzenegger. However, instead of playing for their lives, our intrepid middle class contenders compete for money, which in America is essentially the same thing.
As expected, the players' narratives are as wonderfully contrived as the setup itself. In one episode, a player named Jeff is described as a simple country boy from Tennessee who married his high school sweetheart. They have an adorable seven-year-old daughter who's in attendance and watches with hopeful eyes. Jeff says he wants to show everyone back home that can make it in the big city, which, though not identified, presumably means Hollywood. His fans know Jeff as "Big Country," and they hold up signs and wear "Big Country" t-shirts to make sure we're aware of this. Hulk Hogan, one of the hosts of the show, points to Jeff's head and says to him, "I can see the eye of the tiger right there, and I can tell you got a big heart." So can I. Without having yet seen a single event, I knew that this show was going to be seriously awesome.
The gladiators, for their part, resemble the B-movie versions of characters from the X-Men franchise, with names like "Wolf," "Mayhem" and "Militia," who patriotically salutes the camera in the show's intro. There's also Toa, referred to as "the big Samoan," and "Justice," a Mohawk-clad Mad Max type, who asks us a simple, yet daunting question: "Whatcha gonna do when the hammer of justice comes down on you, baby?" Female gladiators are in the arena too. "Crush" may have many strengths but it's her incredibly large, protruding breasts that are meant to cow us into submission. "Hellga" wears her hair in pigtails and dresses like an athletic Bavarian barmaid working in the German section of Epcot Center. She's 6'1", 205 pounds, and reminds me how happy I am that we won World War II. Caught somewhere between a man and a woman is the purportedly female "Stealth," who's so tranny-like that I find her moniker ironic since it's hard to believe "she" could go undetected anywhere.
Jeff's competitor is a young black man named Adonis. He was the first person to graduate college in his family and is now an engineer working for Boeing, one of the largest aircraft and defense contractors in the world. Adonis is competing for his mother, a single parent college dropout who's been in the army for 16 years and has served three tours of duty in Iraq. Her son doesn't want her to have to serve a fourth. He explains to Hogan, "...If I can win the show, I can retire her. No more wars, no more overseas, you know, Mom just takin' it easy." Whether the show's producers intended this or not, Adonis' back story immediately recalls the context of our times. Suddenly, I'm thrust back into the problems of 21st century America, which I know Adonis can't fix even if he ends up winning a hundred thousands dollars for his poor old mother.
American Gladiators is, of course, a cultural reference to the gladiators of Ancient Rome, who fought to the death in the Colosseum before throngs of fanatic crowds. And while the basic concept of the gladiator has endured, the Roman Empire did not. Reasons for the collapse have been studied for centuries, and include political corruption, a failing economy, urban decay, poor public health, an overextended military that could no longer defend its territory, and what has been described as a loss of civic virtue among Roman citizens. The final death knell of the Empire came at the hands of Muslim invaders. Alas, that pesky French phrase keeps cropping up in my mind: deja vu.
What had been a republic for 500 years, and then grew into an autocratic empire, gradually disintegrated. The Dark Ages came next. The legacy of the most popular form of Roman entertainment now lives on through the hit NBC show. Twelve million Americans watched the two-hour premiere. In the last episode I saw, Hogan asked a player about his strategy for winning the competition. "My plan is to not embarrass myself in front of America," said the player. And with that, the young man darted across a 50-foot suspension bridge hanging above a water tank while trying to avoid the 100-pound demolition balls swung at him by the gladiators.
I think it's too late.
I can remember as far back as grade school invoking my inalienable right to free speech. In some cases I was merely mouthing off to my parents, and at other times it was some meek, unsuspecting teacher who was the unfortunate victim of my civic awareness. "Freedom of speech!" I would cry whenever I was (understandably) told to shut up.
As I grew older and began expressing political ideas, I started to appreciate the true significance of our First Amendment rights. Adopted in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, ‘freedom of speech' became one of the hallmark features of American democracy and a beacon of liberty to the rest of the world. Now, over two centuries later, it seems that much of the world has caught up, with a good number of nations having passed us by altogether.
Earlier this year the World Bank released its annual Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) report, a study that analyzes a mountain of data in order to determine how well nations are governing themselves. The report quantifies a variety of different criteria, including what they identify as "Voice and Accountability." According to the report, "Voice and Accountability measures the extent to which a country's citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media." So just how well did the United States fare at exercising its own core principles? Drum roll, please ...I hope you're sitting down when you read this ...get ready to pop those anti-depressants ...we came in ...35th.
That's right, we rank 35th out of 212 nations for practicing an idea we originally coined. Coming in at 34th is America's own "unincorporated territory" Puerto Rico, and in 33rd is Slovenia, a former member state of the old communist Yugoslavia. Bravo, Uncle Sam. We've been shamed by the Slovenians.
But let's not completely despair. We finished just ahead of some very beautiful vacation destinations. In a nail-biting three-way tie for 36th place are the Dutch territory Aruba, and two British territories, Bermuda and Anguilla. We also placed slightly ahead of Greece, which was ruled by a military junta as recently as 1974, and Spain, a fascist country until General Franco died in 1975. I think we can all breathe an uneasy sigh of relief for edging out Spain, a democracy less than 30 years old.
So where did it all go wrong? The WGI report notes that the US dropped precipitously after 2002, and slipped further from a rank of 22nd back in 2005. At the other end of this downward trajectory is number one ranked Denmark, a country whose free press showed great courage when it refused to succumb to self-censorship in the highly charged controversy surrounding the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Is it possible we might learn something from the Danish about free speech?
"They're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is."
-- Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary, September 26, 2001
A mere fifteen days after one of the worst tragedies to ever befall the United States, Bush's Press Secretary pronounced these fateful words while commenting on the cancellation of Bill Maher's ABC show, Politically Incorrect. Maher had been fired for characterizing the 9-11 hijackers as courageous. Regardless of one's opinion of the matter, Fleischer's statements ushered in the politically restrictive atmosphere that would come to define the Bush Presidency. It was all downhill from there.
Over the next six years, Americans would be subjected to the least inspiring manner of democratic government since the Nixon Administration. Bush, it seemed, never wanted to be anywhere except among his own supporters, and never wanted to field a question that challenged his leadership. In fact, the White House political office has written a "Presidential Advance Manual" which instructs staffers on how to screen out critics at public gatherings. The manual states, "It is important to have your volunteers at a checkpoint before the magnetometers in order to stop a demonstrator from getting into the event." Two such demonstrators, Jeffrey and Nicole Rank, were handcuffed and removed from a Fourth of July Bush rally because they were wearing anti-Bush t-shirts. With a premeditated strategy to curtail the freedom of association and expression, it's almost surprising the US still managed to rank in the top 50.
True to form, the Bush Administration has also penalized its own officials for saying things they did not want to hear, on issues such as Iraq and global warming. Surely the great American free press, as the watchdogs of our democracy, would have something to say about all of this political madness.
"Several articles I wrote or co-wrote were based on this faulty intelligence."
-- Judith Miller, former New York Times reporter, November 9, 2005
A free media is only free if it exercises its rights under the Constitution. A democracy can't have a free press in name only; this would be meaningless. Unfortunately, someone forgot to remind Judith Miller of that, as she became the Bush Administration's unofficial stenographer in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. On September 8, 2002, just three days before the one-year anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, the White House fed her a bogus front-page story about Saddam Hussein making efforts to acquire an atomic bomb. Various Administration officials then referenced this same report as they made their rounds on the Sunday morning talk show circuit. The press had been played. Lazy reporters who are more interested in cozying up to power than speaking truth to it had been manipulated in one of the greatest public relations scams ever perpetrated on the American people.
Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball, got it right on the Iraq War. He was against it from the beginning, and continues to speak of its apparent folly. However, even Matthews has fallen prey to the propaganda emanating from the White House. When Bush landed on an aircraft carrier back in May of 2003 and gave a speech in front of the infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner, Matthews was in awe: "We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like [Bill] Clinton ...Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits. We don't want an indoor prime minister type, or the Danes or the Dutch or the Italians..." Mr. Matthews is right. We're not like those countries at all. They have not taken their freedom of speech for granted to the point where those liberties are now eroding. Indeed, the Brits, the Dutch, the Italians, and as previously noted, the Danes, all rank ahead of the United States on the issue of free speech. Apparently, we're not like the Slovenians, either.
Matthews' claim in 2003 that "the women like this war" would surely have been disputed by Sally Field, who said in her 2007 Emmy acceptance speech, "If mothers ruled the world, there would be no god damned wars in the first place." While this statement is both empirically false and bordering on absurd, it does not excuse the actions of the Fox network, which censored the comment from its telecast. Certainly, the ranting of a Hollywood actor does not constitute a grave threat to the Republic, though even if it did, I don't think Rupert Murdoch should get to decide whether we hear it or not. To paraphrase the oft-cited quote: I may disagree with what Sally Field said but I will defend to the death her right to say it.
But perhaps more troubling than outright censorship in the media is the lack of gravitas among professional journalists whose vocation requires the regular exercising of their First Amendment rights. CNN's Soledad O'Brien comes to mind. On an episode of celebrity Jeopardy, she failed to answer which of the permanent members of the UN Security Council was the smallest. She said France, while the correct answer is the UK. It seemed she wasn't even sure that the UK was a member. While I don't expect most Americans would know this either, I do expect just a little more from the "most trusted name in news." Can Ms. O'Brien be counted on when serious challenges require serious journalism? Or is she merely one rung above anchoring The View, whose co-host Sherri Shepherd was unable to answer the question of whether the world was round or flat. (By the way, didn't we settle that issue with Christopher Columbus?!)
As we should have learned during McCarthyism, self-censorship may be the most pernicious force in a democratic society. Post 9-11 fear mongering has had a chilling effect on open political discourse. Most offensively has been the predominant suggestion that anyone opposing any war is automatically unpatriotic. However intellectually retarded this notion may seem, it has nonetheless achieved the desired effect. Most of the Democratic Party leaders were at one point cowed into submission even when a majority of their own constituents were against the Iraq War. Retaliatory measures for speaking out against Bush and his policies led to the outing of an undercover CIA agent and the firing of generals and other government officials, most of whom chose to remain silent until after they were out of power and inked lucrative book deals. This pervasive climate of fear perhaps reached its zenith with the launching of a secret and illegal wiretapping program. With free speech either under assault, prone to self-censorship, or casually taken for granted, the problem is real and demands our immediate attention. Some would argue that a changing of the guard is in order, and that electing Democrats instead of Republicans is the recipe we need to move up from 35th place.
"I don't really get into the inner workings of the magazine, but I can tell you that, yes, we did kill a Hillary piece."
-- Jim Nelson, GQ Editor in Chief, September 2007
Lack of transparency is a problem for all politicians, regardless of party. When Hillary Clinton learned that GQ magazine was working a story about the infighting in her campaign, she employed Rove-style tactics to squash the article. Her campaign threatened to revoke access to Bill Clinton for a planned cover feature on the former President unless GQ killed the anti-Hillary piece. Regrettably, this is exactly what happened.
Adopting another of Bush's old tricks, Mrs. Clinton's campaign was recently caught planting questions at her own rally in Iowa. A Clinton campaign spokesperson admitted as such, adding, "This is not standard policy and will not be repeated again." You would think the Clinton campaign should have known better. Only weeks before, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had been caught staging its own press conference following the California wildfires. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, whose agency oversees FEMA, said, "I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I've ever seen since I've been in government." If the press is fake, it certainly isn't free either. Is this the kind of obfuscation we can expect in a Hillary Clinton administration?
Democratic challenger Barack Obama thinks this is a legitimate question. At an October Democratic candidates' debate, Senator Clinton came under fire for refusing to release the thousands of documents from her tenure as First Lady. "We have just gone through one of the most secretive administrations in our history. And not releasing, I think, these records at the same time, Hillary, that you're making the claim that this is the basis for your experience, I think, is a problem," Obama said. If we're to fully participate in the selection of our government, then transparency matters. A thriving democracy shouldn't be in the habit of suppressing information.
"Don't tase me, bro!"
-- Andrew Meyer, Student, September 17, 2007
By now most of us are aware of what happened to University of Florida student Andrew Meyer. At the ironically named "Constitution Day" forum featuring Senator John Kerry, police shot Meyer with 50,000 volts of electricity before hauling him off to jail to spend the night. His crime: asking too many questions. Specifically, Meyer had attempted to ask Senator Kerry about reports of voter disenfranchisement during the 2004 presidential election. The fact that he was arrested for doing so explains why we rank 35th in "Voice and Accountability" without any further discussion necessary.
More infuriating than Meyer's treatment by the police were the non-reactions of Senator Kerry and the other students at the event. There were a few screams, but no action. No one did anything but watch. Kerry later said, "I regret enormously that a good healthy discussion was interrupted." Me too.
You hear it all the time. Some movie is "brilliant." Or some musician is "genius." Quite often there's even a talk show host or CEO or novelist who is both "brilliant" and "genius." And let's not forget the children. Parents regularly boast of their baby "geniuses," who are sadly destined to become as "brilliant" as their mothers and fathers. Every day, legions of "geniuses" peddle their "brilliant" ideas in conference rooms across America, and yet our culture remains mired in mediocrity. If we're equipped with such astounding intelligence and creative power, why is it that our nation is in such awful disrepair, and our solutions to fix it so unimaginative?
Surprisingly, Wikipedia gets it right in their entry for "genius," which they define as "a person of great intelligence, who shows an exceptional natural capacity of intellect, especially as shown in creative and original work." The only image on this page is a large photo of Albert Einstein, which they describe as the "archetype of genius." This seems to make sense. It's an appropriately high standard for use of the term "genius," and perhaps explains the popularity of the Baby Einstein DVDs which all of those proud parents foist upon their "brilliant" children. But if we're to follow Wikipedia's example, then it's time to take a closer look at the language we're using, and why we're so quick to ascribe these lofty terms to a society so undeserving.
Maybe we're all too aware of our collective shortcomings, and so our overuse of these words is an attempt to compensate for just how not brilliant we really are. For example, I've often heard what a "brilliant" commander General Petraeus is as he leads our forces in the surge in Iraq. But it's also possible that the general is not "brilliant"; rather, he's merely what the Bush Administration is not: competent. Have we so lowered the bar on "brilliance" that it has now become synonymous with competence? In certain cases, we're even using the "brilliant/genius" designations as euphemisms to mask a larger problem. A Managing Director at Goldman Sachs isn't a "genius" for giving himself hundreds of millions of dollars for his year-end bonus; he's just a highly skilled moneyman who exploited loopholes in the tax code, thanks to massive political corruption in Washington. Meanwhile, the income gap between rich and poor continues to grow at an alarming rate. If we're compensating for a lack of real genius or actual brilliance, then the English language has become our unwitting accomplice.
However, not all of us are completely oblivious to the frequency of these complimentary expressions. Commenting on the creator behind HBO's Deadwood, a good friend of mine recently said, "I'm usually very tight with this expression, but David Milch is a genius." Unfortunately, adding the disclaimer makes the "genius" tag that much more ludicrous. Is my friend really suggesting that he rarely doles out such praise, but that David Milch somehow broke through his basic prohibition on the word? Let's bring it back to the original premise: genius is rare, especially in today's America. That's why the Wikipedia photo is of Albert Einstein. If genius weren't so rare, perhaps the photo would be of David Milch instead.
Then there are those of us on the recipient end of the acclaim who wouldn't dare speak up to object. When was the last time you heard about someone who was called "brilliant" or "genius" that then strenuously disagreed and demanded a retraction for being so overestimated? (Note to Mr. Milch: this is your chance to make history.) I myself was once called "brilliant" for a previous column I wrote in these pages, and did absolutely nothing to disabuse anyone of the notion.
While these words have had their meanings diluted, and their original power emasculated, an even more troubling development has taken hold. Increasingly, these terms are entangled in such convoluted phrases that they fail to make much sense at all. In the first sentence of The New Yorker's review of the Broadway musical "Xanadu," the critic described the show as "ridiculously brilliant." What does this mean exactly? I'll admit I had no idea, so I started at the beginning: I looked up the word "ridiculous" in the dictionary. "Ridiculous" is defined as "inviting derision or mockery." "Brilliant" is defined as "exceptionally clever or talented." Put simply, "brilliant" seems like the opposite of "ridiculous." If "Xanadu" is brilliant in a ridiculous way, how can it really be brilliant at all? This would be an oxymoron. If, on the other hand, the critic meant that the show is so ridiculous it's brilliant, this would suggest that extreme ridiculousness is one way to demonstrate brilliance. Unfortunately, that's the kind of logic that would also make Carrot Top a genius, and if Carrot Top is a genius, then maybe my friend is right about David Milch after all.
In his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell wrote, "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity." Typically ahead of his time, Orwell rightly predicted America's twenty-first century linguistic devolution. It starts from the top down. Now in the seventh year of a self-deluded and disingenuous Bush presidency, it's easy to see how Americans can no longer discern reality from propaganda, and how this has affected our use of certain nouns and adjectives. But, as Orwell also points out, an effect can become a cause and bad language can in turn corrupt our thoughts. This means we have to take responsibility for our own verbal foibles, and be more vigilant in our word choices. A more honest approach to the "brilliant/genius" labels will help us come to terms with our own mediocrity, which will hopefully inspire the need for better work. What we most certainly cannot do is wait for the next "brilliant" president to come along and save us.