"Eight times [Mr. Bush] interchanged the war on Iraq with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," wrote The New York Observer, "and eight times he was unchallenged." The unproven but constantly reiterated White House claim of a Qaeda-Saddam Hussein connection has now become a settled fact, not to be questioned at a press conference…

They Both Reached for the Gun
TO see why "Chicago" became the movie of the year in a year when America sleepwalked into war, you do not have to believe it is the best picture of 2002 (mine would be Almodóvar's "Talk to Her"). Nor must you believe that musical comedy is making a comeback in Hollywood (it's barely holding its own on Broadway, where even "Hairspray" has empty seats). All you have to do is watch a single scene.

That scene is a press conference in 1920's Chicago. A star defense attorney, Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), wants to browbeat a mob of reporters into believing that his client, Roxie Hart (Renée Zellweger), did not murder her lover when in fact she did. "Now remember," Billy coaches Roxie, "we can only sell them one idea at a time." The idea: Roxie acted in self-defense. "We both reached for the gun," Roxie sings to the reporters, who obediently turn her lie into a rousing chorus, repeating it over and over in a production number that portrays them as marionettes, bowing and scraping to the tug of Billy's strings and spin.

For history's sake, this spectacle should be paired on the DVD with George W. Bush's fateful White House press conference of March 6, 2003. This was the president's first prime-time faceoff with reporters since a month after 9/11 and certain to be his last in what remained of peacetime. The former Andover cheerleader had failed to convince America's friends to come aboard. The economy was tanking. But the journalists at hand were so limply deferential to the president's boilerplate script that the subsequent, good-natured "Saturday Night Live" parody couldn't match the gallows humor of the actual event.

One reporter, April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks, asked, "Mr. President, as the nation is at odds over war, how is your faith guiding you?" — a God-given cue for Mr. Bush to once more cloak his moral arrogance in the verbal vestments of humble religiosity. "My faith sustains me because I pray daily," came the president's reply. "I pray for peace, April, I pray for peace." Far be it from Ms. Ryan to ask a follow-up question about why virtually every religious denomination in the country, including Mr. Bush's own, opposes the war. She might as well have been Mary Sunshine (Christine Baranski), the sob sister reporter in "Chicago," who tosses Roxie an image-burnishing softball at her press conference by asking, "Do you have any advice for young girls seeking to avoid a life of jazz and drink?"

At Mr. Bush's sedated show there were no raised voices, not a single query about homeland security or Osama bin Laden. As Billy Flynn says, one idea at a time is enough for the journalistic pack — in this case the administration's idée fixe of Iraq. And like their "Chicago" counterparts, the Washington press corps were more than willing to buy fictions if instructed to do so by the puppeteer. "Eight times [Mr. Bush] interchanged the war on Iraq with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," wrote The New York Observer, "and eight times he was unchallenged." The unproven but constantly reiterated White House claim of a Qaeda-Saddam Hussein connection has now become a settled fact, not to be questioned at a press conference any more than any "Chicago" reporter challenges the mythical pregnancy Billy Flynn flogs in his propaganda campaign to save Roxie Hart.

The movie's press conference ends with Billy Flynn's message spreading from the servile reporters' lips directly to the next morning's paper: "THEY BOTH REACHED FOR THE GUN" is the banner headline we see rolling off the press. At Mr. Bush's press conference, under the guise of "news," CNN flashed the White House's chosen messages in repetitive rotation on the bottom of the screen while the event was still going on — "People of good will are hoping for peace" and " `My job is to protect America.' " No less obliging were the puppets at CNN's rival, Fox News, whose Greta Van Susteren sharply observed: "What I liked tonight was that in prime time he said to the American people, my job is to protect the American people." Though Mr. Bush usually appears on TV in front of White House backdrops stamped with the sound bite he wants to pummel into our brains, this time he didn't even have to bother. As he knew — and said, in his one moment of truth that night — the entire show was "scripted." It has been from the start.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/23/arts/23RICH.html?pagewanted=all&position=top