Michael Brown Plays the Blame Game
One day after it came to light that he was still on FEMA's payroll as a consultant, former FEMA Chief Michael Brown testified before a Congressional panel investigating the government's response to Hurricane Katrina.
He gave himself a good old boy "Brownie you're doing a heck of a job" pat on the back. He said "I've overseen over 150 presidentially declared disasters. I know what I'm doing, and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it."
Memo to Brownie: If you had really known what you were doing, you would not be partly responsible for the deaths of over a thousand Americans. You would have know the reality of what was happening on the grown in New Orleans as people were literally drowning and dying. Call me part of the reality-based community.
Even some Republicans found it hard to ignore Brownie's incompetence. Representative Christopher Shays (R-Conn) told him "I'm happy you left. That kind of look in the lights like a deer tells me you weren't capable of doing that job."
In an utter display of arrogance, Brownie pontificated: "So I guess you want me to be the superhero, to step in there and take everyone out of New Orleans." Rep. Shays responded "What I wanted you to do is do your job and coordinate."
Comment(s) »
» Leave a comment
- Your E-mail address is never displayed. If you enter it, it will only be visible to the blog author
- The line and paragraph breaks automatically
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we heard a lot from the news media about the federal government's failures. Now we're beginning to hear about the news media's failures. "Newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center," notes the Los Angeles Times. Especially revealing is this quote:
Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss cited telephone breakdowns as a primary cause of reporting errors, but said the fact that most evacuees were poor African Americans also played a part.
"If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white people," Amoss said, "it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering."
Let's not beat up too much on our colleagues in the news business. It would be unfair to expect perfection from them in dealing with an unprecedented natural catastrophe, just as it was unfair to expect perfection from the federal government.
But Amoss's remarks ought to give journalists cause for pause. The news industry is besotted with "diversity," and perhaps it is because of, rather than despite, this that newsmen are so prone to engaging in racial stereotyping.
Comment by — 2005/09/27 @ 09:32 PM — (Reply)