"A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on."
-William S. Burroughs
TAPE RECORDER THREE
Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs wrote of using three tape recorders to make tapes to play back of politicians'
embarrassing verbal errors and misstatements. He felt that they couldn’t change their stories if their stories were played back,
repeatedly, as protest to a monopoly on information by the powerful. Burroughs and like minded friends would take two tape
recorders of political speeches and record them into something of a backlash on the third recorder. "If anyone can be tape
recorder three, then tape recorder three loses power," he theorized.
For Burroughs, the key element for waking up minds was PLAYBACK. It's almost impossible not to think of Burroughs
as the press begins to play back Bush declaring a mission accomplished in Iraq. Today ex-Dead Kennedy's singer and
spoken word artist, Jello Biafra, encourages young people to BECOME THE MEDIA. He's trying to increase the volume on
tape recorder three.
In addition to changing stories about why the United States went to pre-emptive war against Iraq, George Bush has told
soldiers in Colorado that the Taliban is gone forever from Afghanistan. Just like claims of Saddam and WMD, the people
Bush gets his information from can't agree on whether or not the Taliban is gone. The opium business is booming again in
Afghanistan. On that much there seems to be general agreement. Some of the news media underreports such stories, but
fortunately, satirists never sleep. Shows like The Daily Show and the many voices of the left on Air America offer constant
reminders of things that some politicians say and retract, distort, or ignore.
With samples and editing technology making great strides, examples of Burroughs' audio rhetoric technique are all around
in modern culture. Longtime Bush family critic, Paris' song "What Can I Do?" samples George W. Bush speaking and re-
arranges it into a call out against the rights and safety of the American people. Paris believes that to be the 'hidden message'.
The group Black Grape, in 1997, released a track called "Get Higher" that spliced together Ronald and Nancy Reagan 'just
saying yes' to drugs, complete with Ronnie saying the line: "One more thing, Nancy and I are both hooked on heroin."
The modern airing of tape recorder three seems to exist most prominently in the form of a number of political books
released in the form of audiobooks. Though they don't literally play back Bush's voice, many authors are finding a large
audience for works that re-examine the spin that was and is coming out of the current White House. During the 1996 election
season, Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher (then on Comedy Central) had a segment every night called "Strange
Bedfellows." The nightly feature played on the old adage that politics makes strange bedfellows. Sharing a bed, literally, were
Al Franken and Ariana Huffington. Franken represented the political left and Huffington the political right. They would have
cordial, and often times very humorous, debates. In 2004, both authors and political critics are fighting from the left.
Franken's book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them is a huge bestseller. It's best enjoyed with Franken reading it
aloud. Huffington sees the current Republicans in power as so dangerous that she is now a Democrat fighting to re-defeat
George Bush in the November election. Her book, Fanatics & Fools, which she also reads on audio, offers equally critical
and negative analysis of the Bush Administration.
Perhaps the most powerful audio playback offered yet on the subject of Bush and what he has or hasn't done is offered by
Richard Clarke, a terrorism expert who worked for each administration from Reagan to George W. Bush. Clarke's book
Against All Enemies is a point by point analysis of what the last four presidents, including George W., failed to do to stop the
Al Qaeda threat. Several Bush Administration officials have made major efforts to discredit Clarke, who was the man who
seemed to keep the US government running in the minutes and hours after the events on 9-11-01. Clarke is the sole
government official to apologize to the loved ones of victims who died in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. on
that tragic day. The Bush Administration says that Clarke is just a disgruntled ex-employee, just like former Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill and Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Hearing Clarke tell the story of Al Qaeda's origins and who was
and wasn't watching them before 9-11 is quite compelling and disturbing, as are his recollections of that day in particular. His
re-telling is a thorough briefing on the war on terror.
Joseph Wilson offers the story of how he believes the Bush Administration leaked his wife's secret status as a CIA agent
investigating nuclear terrorism. A grand jury is currently investigating the source of the leak, which may be from inside the
office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Wilson's excellent book, The Politics of Truth, is not available in audiobook, but an
excellent book about Paul O'Neill is. The Price of Loyalty, by Wall Street Journal writer Ron Suskind, tells the story of how
O'Neill was begged to be the first cabinet member hired by the incoming Bush White House in 2000. O'Neill had been the
CEO of Alcoa. Under his leadership the company saw great profits. According to Price, read by Bernard Hermann (the evil
ring leader of vampires in The Lost Boys), Cheney pleaded with O'Neill to bring some sense to the finances in American
government. O'Neill was let go after he criticized Bush's tax cuts, which many economists blame for a large budget surplus
created under President Clinton turning into a large deficit during Bush's 1st term.
Clarke's book was a very hot topic for a brief time during and after he and his current chief critic each testified before the
Congressional commission investigating the 9-11 attacks. Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice traded
differing opinions of the events leading up to and on the day of 9-11. When the Washington Post's Bob Woodward released
Plan of Attack, both the Bush and Kerry campaign machines were promoting the political benefits of Woodward's book
about the war in Iraq. Some people on the left were speculating that Bush's people were hyping Plan of Attack to distract
the bookbuying public from Clarke's more critical analysis. The Republicans were saying that Plan of Attack may have
alleged that Bush was planning to invade Iraq earlier than he indicated publicly, but at least, they figured, it showed him as a
decisive leader. Woodward, with the audiobook read by Boyd Gaines (nerdy boyfriend to Daphne Zuniga in The Sure Thing
with John Cusack), takes the reader through the ins and outs of Bush taking America into its first pre-emptive war. Many
critics have speculated that the chief leaker of info for Woodward's book was Secretary of State Colin Powell, perhaps the
Bush Administration's most disgruntled current employee. Regardless, the Republicans hope it will show Bush as a strong
minded, able president. The Democrats hope that Woodward's account will help bring down another Republican, as he
helped do to Richard Nixon with his Washington Post stories written with Carl Bernstein that eventually became history as the
book and movie All The President's Men.
Tape recorder three is also coming to a movie theater near you. One of the summer's biggest movies is expected to be
The Day After Tomorrow. Made by the same people who brought the mega-hit Independence Day, this disaster film deals
with global warming. This relevant topic has brought about political activism from groups like Moveon.org and 2000
Presidential popular vote winner Al Gore. They hope to play back George Bush's record on global warming to the American
cinema audience as they exit The Day After Tomorrow. Environmental activists hope to clue the public in to a Pentagon
report that claims global climate change, which Bush denies as an existing phenomenon, is a greater concern than even the
war on terrorism. The report stated that within decades most or all of Europe could be plunged underwater (as New York
City is in the film) by rising global sea levels.
A film that will eventually see American movie theaters is this year's Cannes Film Festival top prize winner, Michael
Moore's Fahrenheit 911. Moore's new film does play back George Bush's voice and image as well as his connections to the
Saudis. Moore alleges more connections between Bush and the Saudis and Al Qaeda than Saddam connections to Al
Qaeda. The film was deemed too hot to release by Disney, the parent company of Moore's collaborators at Miramax. The
heads of Miramax, the Weinstein brothers, have bought back the film from Disney in order to get it in the theaters before the
coming election.
John Kerry's campaign has caught on to the benefits of tape recorder three with so many soundbites coming from the
opponent Kerry is facing in this election. His campaign recently released an ad criticizing Bush's record on health care. The
ad, called "Time's Up," played and repeated Bush's own statement in January 2000 that his goal was to make health care
affordable to everyone.
Not all the playback is coming in on audio or film. Everyone from Norman Mailer to former Nixon Counsel John Dean
have written books about Bush and his 1st term policy decisions. Dean, who figured at the center of the Watergate scandal,
entitles his book Worse Than Watergate because he believes Bush is more secretive than Nixon. He offers his experience on
the dangers of secrets at the highest levels of government.
Even death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal has offered his two cents on Bush's Iraq distortions from the belly of the beast.
It's hard to listen to excuses from an election ignorant public when a man who has been in prison for decades can stay up on
current events. He may never return to American life outside his cell, but he still cares about what happens to America and to
the world. Even from death row, tape recorder three is playing back.
CJ aka Improv