President Bush is touring the South today, posing for the camera and promising "we’re here for the long term."
Let’s hope "the long term" is longer than the time it takes to set up and tear down the falsified scenes of progress our President is posing in front of. As Senator Mary Landrieu noted, when the President mugged for the cameras at the Seventeenth Street Levee, the site was a beehive of activity — a pleasing backdrop for a Presidential visit. Today, the work is being carried on by a single crane.
From Senator Landrieu’s emotional speech today:
Touring this critical site yesterday with
the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant
effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying
over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later,
it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage
set for a Presidential photo opportunity.
While the American press dutifully reports Presidential fabrications as reality, the terrible hypocrisy of such events has not been overlooked by the foreign media. Here’s a report on the President’s tour of Biloxi, Mississippi, now in progress, as filed by the German public television station, ZDF:
Where
the US President visited the disaster area, auxiliary troops appeared and cleaned up the area properly — however, they cleaned only [the vicinity of the President’s appearance]. Biloxi’s desperate inhabitants told … German Television correspondent Claudia Rueggeberg that Bush should be bringing relief goods here in his sedans
instead of loud bodyguards and his dear assistants.Along the route of Bush’s appearances, troops clear debris and remove corpses. Then Bush left again and, with him … the aid teams. In
Biloxi, the situation has not changed, and the people here have nothing.
And from a video clip aired on the same station (translation and reference courtesy MetaFilter.com):
Two minutes ago the President drove by here in his convoy. But what went
on here in Biloxi during the day is really unbelievable. Suddenly
rescue teams showed up, suddenly heavy salvaging equipment was here —
you didn’t see those all the days before. And this in an area where it
really wouldn’t be necessary to clean up big time, because nobody lives around here anymore. The people are more in the inner areas of the
city. The President travels with a press group — this way, these press
people have beautiful images that are supposed to convey "the President
was here, and the help — it will come as well". The extent of the
natural disaster has shocked me. But the extent of this theatrical
staging today is shocking me at least as much.
I didn’t think anything about this situation could depress and sicken me more … and now, this. How long before Americans, as a nation, rise up and demand the resignation of leaders who use tactics like these?
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