The secret life of G.W. Bush, according to GQ

[RedEarth]

The secret life of G.W. Bush, according to GQ
- Steven Winn, Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic
Monday, August 2, 2004


Isn't that a bare-chested George W. Bush cavorting with Saigon bar girls in 1972? And who knew that the leader of the free world once worked as a Rolling Stones roadie? Or hung out with Andy Warhol's Pop Art crowd? It's all laid out in a lavish photo spread and accompanying text in a national magazine now on the newsstands.

The August issue of GQ has scored the mock scoop of this Bush-baiting summer -- and toyed with the conventions of straightforward magazine photojournalism in the process. The piece and its presentation once again raise touchy issues of fairness and full disclosure in political humor, touched off earlier this year by Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11." This latest media stunt also invites everyone to lighten up and go along with the joke.

In a satirical prank complete with a half dozen arty photographs by a British conceptual artist, "Bush: The Missing Year" purports to account for the unexplained gap in the president's Air National Guard service in 1972-73. The story, by senior editor Jason Gay, details Bush's clandestine activities in the U.S. military's fictitious Special Undercover Missions Service (SUMS).

The photographer, Alison Jackson, used a young Bush look-alike -- a 25- year-old Philadelphia insurance adjuster in real life -- as a model. In the lead shot, he touches a young Vietnamese woman's waist as she fondles his collar. Three other smiling beauties look on. He's shirtless and grinning wildly in the next shot.

Other images show the Bush stand-in playing cards with a Mick Jagger model and touching up a Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe. In the final staged photo, a white-haired Barbara Bush type yanks her son out of bed by his ear, a fifth of Jack Daniel's in his hand and pictures of nudes scattered on the floor.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/08/02/DDGF780BEP1.DTL

[Cocoa]

1. the reference to Moore is way off

F 9/11 was funny, but it wasn't a joke, and the footage was not fabricated. That was not a stand-in for Bush, that was Bush.