Salon.com, the Bush Administration and Kitsch

Sidney Blumenthal has written an op-ed piece for Salon.com entitled "Fall of the house of kitsch." In it, he describes "kitsch" as being "imitative, cheap, sentimental, mawkish and incoherent, and derives its appeal by demeaning and degrading genuine standards and values, especially those of modernity" and points out that the Bush Administration's entire core of values is completely based on kitsch.

Mr. Blumenthal writes:

"The pathology of Bush's kitsch is the endless reproduction of vicarious hatred of the 'other,' who is the threat to the sanctity of what kitsch represents. The 'other' lies beyond the image of the lurking terrorist to the lurking Democrat -- 'America loses.' 'You're either with us or with the terrorists,' Bush said famously. You either have a 'pre-9/11' mind-set or a 'post-9/11' one, according to his strategist Karl Rove, who carefully set the terms of demonization. In the great act of kitsch, Bush et al. apotheosized their fiasco in Iraq into a battle against Hitler -- 'appeasers' ... 'Islamofascism.' By impersonating a historical context, they projected themselves into it."

Anyway, give it a read.

Pure camp,

James "Tacky" Comtois