William Gibson--author of Neuromancer--on OBL tapes

[NewHampshireDem]

If there is one man who has a sense of American culture and society in the 21st century, it is William Gibson.

Meanwhile, OBL himself checks in (evidently having watched Fahrenheit 9.11, as he makes a joke about My Pet Goat) with fresh footage, and what are we to make of that?

A central part of my sense of history, since the attacks, has been that OBL and Bush are symbiotic, feeding one another power and (at least as crucially) meaning.

I don't, however, see their relationship as symmetrical, since OBL ultimately seems to get more out of it than Bush does. OBL gets edged closer to his hypothetical win-position, and Bush doesn't. (This imbalance is probably due to OBL having come to the union with no lack of meaning, while Bush, prior to 9-11, meant almost nothing at all.)

At a deeper level of power-exchange, though, win-positions are only hypothetical, for these two. What matters most to them is that they continue to have each other.

In that light, I can only assume that OBL's new tape is a very clever player's best shot at getting his partner a second term.

I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that OBL fears Kerry any more than Bush. But Kerry can only comprise an unknown, and why allow the other team to introduce an unknown when your familiar power-symbiote has always proven so wonderously adept at doing everything you'd most want him to do?

OBL today is probably a very satisfied, very optimistic man, and if he can skew the last-minute dynamic of the election in Bush's favor, he'll have cause to be all the more satisfied.

And that's the danger, that some crucial percentage of our dimmer, more reactive voters will flash back to 9-11 and the Bush of the bullhorn, the Bush buffeted with the heartbroken grit of Ground Zero, and vote for that -- childishly imagining that such a vote runs counter to the wishes and the needs of OBL, the bearded stickman, the cave-dwelling spider, our new Old Man of the Mountains. Player of the long game.

emphasis added
http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2004_10_01_archive.asp#109907889910593617

[cali]

1. Gibson is brilliant n/t

[seventhson]

2. Awesome analysis!!!

Gibson is a master!

[bemildred]

3. While I somewhat agree, that

If OBl is sticking his oar into the election, it's to shore up
Bush, the certain publicity is more than enough to explain the
tape and it's timing. If he really wanted to shore up Bush, he
could have put on a much better show, guns and death to america
and threats, trying to spook the herd again, as Gibson points out.

As it was, it seemed more like it was aimed at his political base,
a manifesto, a political speech. His rhetoric was much tamer than
the return fire about extermination and so on fron the US. The last
two paragraphs, while correct, are gravy for OBL, a good strategy
works in many ways.