Oh that Word....

Authenticity is back it seems.
The punditariat has been whispering it lately, it seems President Bush is still the most "authentic" guy around which suits these stuffed shirts just fine.
Political connoisseurs will note that everyone from Maureen Dowd to Mike Barnicle got weak in the knees back in campaign 2000, insisting that Governor Bush's callowness, fanaticism, and ignorance were somehow...authentic.
Being "authentic" is considered a virtue among the chattering classes.
It is a clear case of projection though....what else would our native class of perjurers, hopeless dissemblers and pseudo intellectuals ever aspire to?
Frankly authenticity is a trite meaningless virtue, your average Mongoloid can achieve it very handily.
As far as the rankings go it stands far down on the list next to the comparable vice of hypocrisy..they are both utterly inevitable in life and utterly forgettable as well.
Frankly to call someone "authentic" is to indirectly catalogue their many missing virtues....
These days authenticity is rapidly becoming one of those Orwellian types words that signals little more than a pleasing characteristic that even the worst and most cruel personality must be able to project if they are to succeed.
At the moment though, authenticity stands as little else than an advertising slogan, a term in the transitory stages of corruption and debasement.
If English was written and spoken correctly we'd say a person was "honest" in place of the murky honorific "authentic".
But ah...honesty still means something these days, and to call George Bush Jr. honest is to instantly call up memories of his many gaffes, lies, distortions and revisions on the road to war with Iraq.
So we are back to the punditariat citing GWB's simple authenticity....it is safe, vague and inevitable.
The advantage is, that under the appellation of "authentic" the President can go on stealing, lying, and conniving like the scoundrel he is sans reproof.
So it's a win-win situation all around.