From Carol V. Hamilton's "Being Nothing: George W. Bush as Presidential Simulacrum":
In the screenplay version of Being There, Chance's former caretaker Louise, happens to witness his performance. Of all the millions of viewers, she alone knows of Chance's intellectual limitations. She is the only counterpart to the child in the fable who declares that the emperor is naked. She exclaims to herself:
Gobbledegook! All the time he talked gobbledegook! An' it's for sure a White man's world in America. Hell, I raised that boy since he was the size of a puissant an' I'll say right now he never learned to read an' write -- no sir! Had no brains at all, was stuffed with rice puddin' between the ears! Short-changed by the Lord and dumb as a jackass an' look at him now! Yes, sir -- all you gotta be is white in America an' you get whatever you want! Just listen to that boy -- gobbledegook!
One might speculate that a flat personality like that of Chance, or of George W. Bush, is inherently more in accord with the flatness of the television or computer screen and thus transmits smoothly and consistently. By contrast, perhaps, a complex, three-dimensional personality, full of contradictions, corners, and real history is difficult to reduce to a flat surface. Not all politicians, however, are inherently flat. John Kerry, for example, has posed a problem for the sound-bite insights of television pundits. How could anyone be both a decorated war hero and a longhaired protestor? A novel could delicately delineate such a transformation (think of Lord Jim or Crime and Punishment) but television must flatten it into "flip-flopping." The obviously literate Kerry, who speaks in complex sentences and uses "big words," has been compensating for these deficiencies by emphasizing his athleticism and military experience. He advertises himself as "the real deal."
link via GreenCine Daily.
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