Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Just saw the Frontline on Katrina. I'll read the transcript before commenting at length, but it made me wonder if I was too harsh on Stephanie Grace recently. The reporter asked Blanco the same question about critics who say she didn't ask for the right kind of help in the right way.
Maybe I'm just an ignorant product of the New Orleans Public School System, but it seems to me like that criticism is based on such a ludricrous premise that it couldn't withstand a moment's thought. Are we really supposed to believe that when the mayor and governor were screaming and pleading for help, there was something wrong with aid request? Let me see if I understand this scenario, The President (or Michael Chertoff) receives an aid request from the governor,but something's wrong with the paperwork and the request for assisstance can't be honored. Are we really supposed to believe, in this scenario, that there's some law that kept anyone in The White House or DHS from telling someone in the Governor's office about the problem? If there was no communication between Washington and Baton Rouge, was there anything that kept Scott McClellan from telling the press: "we'd love to help, but we need form 10A?" Is it all possible that Michael Brown's secretary (when she text messaging Marty Bahamonde about B.R. restaurants) was somehow prohibited from sending a message telling Bahamonde to tell the folks in La. to sign line 86c?
So, in all seriousness, am I missing something? Or has the combination of he said/she said journalism and intellectual laziness rendered today's reporters incapable of critical thought? Comments welcome. If it's that I'm dense, feel free to say so. You might want to explain it in real simple English though.
Actually, the Frontline special was pretty good.
Maybe I'm just an ignorant product of the New Orleans Public School System, but it seems to me like that criticism is based on such a ludricrous premise that it couldn't withstand a moment's thought. Are we really supposed to believe that when the mayor and governor were screaming and pleading for help, there was something wrong with aid request? Let me see if I understand this scenario, The President (or Michael Chertoff) receives an aid request from the governor,but something's wrong with the paperwork and the request for assisstance can't be honored. Are we really supposed to believe, in this scenario, that there's some law that kept anyone in The White House or DHS from telling someone in the Governor's office about the problem? If there was no communication between Washington and Baton Rouge, was there anything that kept Scott McClellan from telling the press: "we'd love to help, but we need form 10A?" Is it all possible that Michael Brown's secretary (when she text messaging Marty Bahamonde about B.R. restaurants) was somehow prohibited from sending a message telling Bahamonde to tell the folks in La. to sign line 86c?
So, in all seriousness, am I missing something? Or has the combination of he said/she said journalism and intellectual laziness rendered today's reporters incapable of critical thought? Comments welcome. If it's that I'm dense, feel free to say so. You might want to explain it in real simple English though.
Actually, the Frontline special was pretty good.
