BLAME THE PRESS: DEAD MAN FLOATING

Forgive us, lawd, we know not what we do. Fools that we are, we offered an olive branch to Tom Friedman, and today he reverted to form in another typical faux memo to "Iraq's Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni leaders" from "An American friend." Advising them on the impact Katrina is likely to have on Iraq, due to the weakened political capital of our Bullshitter-in-Chief, he tells them who's responsible for weakening him: It's the press.

Yup, in Uncle Tommy Boy's view, "the Katrina TV drama is not going away" because, "Hell hath no fury like journalists with a compelling TV story where they get to be the heroes and the government the fools." He says this, mind you, when reporters have had their cameras smashed and guns pointed at their heads by police and the National guard to keep them from photographing Katrina's aftermath, just as was done in Iraq.

This morning's Democracy Now tells about that. As soon as the segment is posted online, we'll provide the link. In the meantime, have a look at this report and this one and this (gracias Romenesko): Washington Post reporter Timothy Dwyer said he heard a sergeant from a state agency telling a camera crew allowed on a boat in a flooded area near downtown New Orleans: "If we catch you photographing one body, we're going to bring you back in and throw you off the boat." And this, from a San Francisco Chronicle reporter: "I did not actually count the number of automatic weapons pointed at me, but there were at least five, and I was certain they were all locked and loaded ..."

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Postscript: Here's the DN segment, both video and transcript. And don't overlook this equally revealing segment: FEMA Promotes Pat Robertson Charity, with links to "Pat Robertson's Katrina Cash" in The Nation and "Disaster used as political payoff" in New York's Daily News.