I avoid political rants and even political comments, but this has to be said about what Daryn Kagan said immediately after George W. Bush was aired being briefed in Mississippi.
Bush was briefed, live on TV, by some authorities. Then he made some statements and headed for the next place to see in his very public viewing of the horrendous disaster in MS, AL, and LA.
When he was done, she vented something along these lines: I think it is terrible the President would use our time to be briefed; he could have been briefed while en route; instead, he used the time to permit the Republican governors make it clear they are getting plenty of work done. I don't quote; but I think this is fair.
If so, and I'll assume so, I said to myself: is the use of TV time to make public statements something new? Has CNN done the job of showing us footage of all the good work that so many are doing to relieve many of pain? Or has CNN spent nearly every conceivable minute telling us about how bad everything is? (As if we are not making any progress.)
I'll avoid getting into whether we acted soon enough and all that. My point is this: Is it fair to criticize the President for doing this (and, sure, what he did was probably planned to show the world that some things are being done) when CNN is doing all it can to make its own points?
C'mon Daryn, you're better than that.
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Just watched Geraldo weeping at the Convention Ctr in NO. He says the govt locked them in and promised them help. No help yet.
The best comment I have read in this string...
The videos I saw from the center of New Orleans (ppl dying in the street, etc.) didn’t look “stagedâ€. When you’ve just seen footage of our fellow countrymen suffering, and then you see the President “stagingâ€â€¦well, in my mind, the angry response is understandable, if not justified.
This is exactly the way I see it Franklin. I took the day of today for a long weekend and while I did not see Kagin's response, I did say to myself, 'wow, that just looks very out of place."
When you put the President's staged briefing, that is there to protect him politically, next to footage of babies that have been trapped with dead bodies for days, the President just doesn't come off looking all that good to me. And I say it was political protection because face it, he's a politician.
Great news - we just heard the last unaccounted for memeber of my wife's family is safe! The row her house is in on coastal Miss. was damaged, but spared. She said the Red Cross has been by every day to give her water.
Yes, that was off topic, but ... hallleujah.
Pray for our neighbors - still stuck in N.O. as far as we know.
Thanks Kerry, you and your friends are in our prayers.
A hermeneutic of suspicion is definitely in play with CNN and Bush, a hermeneutic of love with Fox and Bush. Without choosing sides, I do like Fox's title of the event ("America's Challenge") better than CNN's nomiker ("State of Emergency") as it's more positive.
JH
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