PressEthic

Michael Brown, the former head of FEMA, went in front of a special House committee today and blamed the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans for not working well together. It seems that Mr. Brown's only mistake, in his eyes anyway, is that he failed to make them realize they were being a bunch of babies and that they needed to sit down together and work things out.

Mr. Brown also went on to say that he thinks he does “a pretty darn good job,” echoing the president’s well-known sentiment, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” Besides tooting his own horn, blaming the victims of Katrina and blaming the press for distracting him from his job, Brown chided the members of the committee for expecting him to be some kind of superhero.

I mean, how dare these people think that he would be capable of doing his job? Poor, put-upon Brownie. But Mr. Brown’s time in the limelight is not over yet. The Bush administration is paying him to “consult” on what could have gone wrong with FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina. I can tell you right now what that conclusion is going to be:

1. Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin were too busy fighting to do anything useful.

2. The press was distracting Brown from his job by pestering him for interviews.

3. Those darn people who lived in New Orleans didn’t get out in time. Did they expect him to be a superhero or something?

So while the press is patting itself on the back for helping to get rid of such an ineffectual person – as indeed I did in a previous post – it would do well to realize that the job is not over. The media needs to keep hammering, and to make sure that the wool isn’t pulled over the eyes of the public. Putting Michael Brown in the position of “consultant” is the Bush Administration’s way of laughing at everyone. The media needs to make sure that the laughter stops.