August 25, 2006

Nagin’s “Hole in the Ground” Comment Draws Claws

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Mayor Ray Nagin probably shouldn’t have called Ground Zero a hole in the ground (you can watch him say it on 60 Minutes this Sunday), but does Google News really need to post this article covering it, out of the 246 related ones it had to choose from:

The next few weeks will see a furious struggle to frame two important anniversaries, with the media spinning in overdrive to play up the importance of the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and at the same time to downplay the significance of the five-year anniversary of September 11. The reasons are simple: Katrina helps Democrats, 9/11 help President Bush and the GOP.

This is Google News, not Google Opinion, or Google Soapbox. John McIntyre a conservative pundit who, wait for it, writes for Fox News, goes on:

Let me give a little piece of unsolicited PR advice to Mayor Nagin: comments like that will quickly have the country siding 95% with New York and against New Orleans. I get pissed just thinking about Nagin contemptuously describing the ground where Islamist’s attacked and murdered over 2,500 Americans as simply “A hole in the ground.”
I’d love to see a full scale, accurate and honest documentary covering the entire Katrina crisis period of Mayor Nagin and the New Orleans city government and compare that to Mayor Giuliani and New York City’s response to 9/11.

The rub here is that Giuliani and Nagin, no matter how they handled their respective disasters, and one could argue that the former had a lot more to work with, when it comes to catastrophes of this scope the buck stops with the President. Bush can’t have it both ways, flexing his executive power to the point of theocracy one day then vacationing when crisis strikes. And Mr. McIntyre doesn’t mention two quite relevant things: first, there was ample warning, days in fact, before Katrina struck and Bush did nothing (and then later lied about getting advanced warning). And perhaps more egregious, he failed to learn from his behavior when the twin towers were struck. On both 9/11 and during Katrina our Commander in Chief was paralyzed, inept in the precise moments presidents are meant for.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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