A friend sent me an email which contained the inaugural, and thus far only, post from a new site,
Is Bush Wired?.
As its name would suggest, its aim is to focus media attention on the question of whether Bush uses an earpiece and covert prompting to get through his public appearances, and they cite quite a bit of suggestive, if not conclusive, evidence to say that he does.
More below the fold . . .
The post is titled "The Voice in Bush's Ear" (but it concerns itself only with electronic voices, leaving aside the question of any voices of a drug-induced or religiously megalomaniacal nature).
This site is a clearinghouse for discussion of whether President Bush uses an earpiece through which he's fed lines and cues by offstage advisers. His speech rhythms suggest this, as do some of his word choices and interjections, and his constantly shifting eye movements while speaking. And there's another form of evidence: Television viewers have sometimes heard another voice speaking Bush's words before he says them.
I only knew of one time this had happened, during a CNN broadcast, which was discussed here at dKos at the time. But according to Is Bush Wired?, it also happened on the night of 9/11, when Bush was addressing the nation:
. . . viewers of one television station in Quincy, Massachusetts heard another voice speaking, slowly and carefully, a few words at a time -- words which were then recited by the president. The voice was nondescript, male, definitely not the president's voice, says Quincy resident Robyn Miller. This went on for at least four sentences, she says, and then the "extra" feed was cut off.
Why haven't the media ever raised this question? Apart from their well-known and oft-bemoaned symbiosis with the administration, the site provides an interesting anecdote that illustrates just how complicit the media are in the extended political theater that is the Bush administration:
"Sure, Bush uses an earpiece sometimes," a top Washington editor for Reuters said to me last spring. "State of the Union -- he had an earpiece for that. Everybody knows it," he said, or assumes it. But everybody doesn't know it, I said. Why hadn't Reuters investigated? The editor shrugged and said it wasn't so different from using a teleprompter.
According to this, Bush's dependency is an open secret in the Washington press corps.
Is Bush Wired? provides a discussion of the technology involved; links to more information; and an excerpt from a blogger's analysis of a December 2003 press conference, which also concludes that Bush is being fed his lines. The site also has some photos, including shots taken from behind during the debate, in which the boxy shape under Bush's jacket is clearly visible.
Now, I know there are those of you at dKos who think this whole question is an unnecessary distraction. I disagree, for the simple reason that it goes to the heart of Bush's image, the one that so much of the American public still buys into. As Is Bush Wired? says, in response to the Reuters editor's comment:
. . . a teleprompter isn't a secret. And Americans have the right to know if the president can't or won't speak in public without covert assistance.
Unmasking this secret is part and parcel of getting people to realize that the Emperor has no clothes. And while it may seem trivial, it's precisely the sort of thing that can have a powerful impact on credulous Bush supporters--that their supposedly strong, competent, and moral leader would cheat in such a petty way.