{"id":23924,"date":"2021-01-15T10:49:04","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T10:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.currentaffairs.org\/2021\/01\/dogaganda-how-politicians-use-pets-to-convince-you-of-their-humanity\/"},"modified":"2021-01-15T15:02:47","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T15:02:47","slug":"puppaganda-how-politicians-use-pets-to-convince-you-of-their-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/15\/puppaganda-how-politicians-use-pets-to-convince-you-of-their-humanity\/","title":{"rendered":"Puppaganda: How Politicians Use Pets to Convince You of Their Humanity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
One of the first things I remember learning about U.S. politics, when I was about seven years old, was that Bill Clinton had a cat named Socks and a dog named Buddy. I am fairly sure they told us about Socks in school, long before we learned about welfare reform and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. I don\u2019t know who it was that started encouraging children to write letters to Socks and Buddy, but in 1998 Hillary Clinton published a whole book<\/a> of these notes, along with \u201cmore than 80 photos of [the] former first pets\u201d plus \u201ca White House \u2018pet history,\u2019 from Dolly Madison\u2019s parrot to Teddy Roosevelt\u2019s menagerie.\u201d The Christian Science Monitor <\/em>called it<\/a> \u201cutterly adorable.\u201d (It featured questions from children like: \u201c[Dear Socks:] How does it feel to be top cat? Do you like Buddy? Do you have press conferences with other leader cats? Where is your cat box?\u201d)<\/p>\n Presidential pets are micro-celebrities, and there is even a Presidential Pet Museum that has received coverage all over the media<\/a>. Both of Barack Obama\u2019s family dogs, Bo<\/a> and Sunny<\/a>, have their own Wikipedia pages, complete with full biographies and compilations of media coverage. (There\u2019s even a section devoted to \u201cControversies,\u201d such as the media flap over why Bo wasn\u2019t a rescue dog<\/a>.) George W. Bush\u2019s Scottish terrier, Barney<\/a>, \u201cstarred in eleven government film productions\u201d including Barney Cam, Barney Reloaded, Barney\u2019s Holiday Extravaganza, My Barney Valentine, Barney Cam VI: Holiday in the National Parks, <\/em>and Barney Cam VII: A Red, White and Blue Christmas<\/em>. (Barney was not universally popular. Karl Rove called him a \u201clump,\u201d Vladimir Putin suggested he made Bush seem unmanly, and both a Reuters <\/em>journalist and the public relations director for the Boston Celtics were bitten by Barney.) Some White House functionary spent time making full transcripts of Barney\u2019s motion pictures, which can be found in the Bush archives<\/a>. The \u201cdemand for information [about Barney] was so great\u201d that<\/a> the Bush White House made a dedicated site, Barney.gov. <\/p>\n