Bush uses firefighters as PR props
Just when you thought they could sink no lower (via Talking Points Memo):
We think Kos said it best:
Their top priority is public relations, not saving human lives or helping the American people. Read the Salt Lake Tribune article.
Firefighters as props, indeed.
On the Al Franken show this afternoon I mentioned this article from today's Salt Lake Tribune (a must read article) which tells the story of about a thousand firefighters from around the country who volunteered to serve in the Katrina devastation areas. But when they arrived in Atlanta to be shipped out to various disaster zones in the region, they found out that they were going to be used as FEMA community relations specialists. And they were to spend a day in Atltanta getting training on community relations, sexual harassment awareness, et al. This of course while life and death situations were still the order of the day along a whole stretch of the Gulf Coast.What an outrage! Just to let you see what we're talking about here:
It's an article you've really got a to read to appreciate the full measure of folly and surreality.
But the graf at the end of the piece really puts everything in perspective, and gives some sense what the Bush administration really has in mind when it talks about a crisis. The paper reports that one team finally was sent to the region ...As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.
We think Kos said it best:
Bush is so thoroughly a PR vessel that he can't even tour a disaster zone without his human backdrop. He's been a PR marionette for so long -- clear brush for the cameras! -- that he's become thoroughly incapable of keeping it real. God forbid he try to connect with people, get a better understanding of their efforts to cope with real disaster. That's not worth his time. Nope, it's got to be turned into a frickin' Bush campaign commercial. Everything is political. Everything.We dare Orbusmax, Mr. Cummins, et al. to defend this. Wholly unacceptable. We said it before: they botched the emergency preparedness and they terribly mismanaged the crisis afterwards. They're still mismanaging it.
Their top priority is public relations, not saving human lives or helping the American people. Read the Salt Lake Tribune article.
Firefighters as props, indeed.
