FEMA must’ve been watching a little too much Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert and the fake news concept must’ve appealed to them a little too much:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency staged a fake news conference this week, with agency staff officials, pretending to be reporters, peppering one of their own bosses with decidedly friendly questions about the response to the California fires, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged Friday.
The action, first reported on Friday in The Washington Post, drew a rebuke from the White House and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and an apology from the agency official who was at the lectern, Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy director.
“We have made it clear that such a stunt will never be tolerated or repeated,” a spokeswoman for the department, Laura C. Keehner, said on behalf of Mr. Chertoff.
I’d have thought poor Mr. Johnson would’ve been out the door if there was any such thing as accountability; especially after the sorry-assed performance of Michael ‘Brownie’ Brown during Katrina. Does FEMA need more of this clownishness?
I can’t wait to see what Stewart and Colbert will do with this story. It’s simply TOO delicious. Kinda like what they call in baseball a ‘hanging curve’ just waiting to be belted out of the park. Sadly, No could do a good job with it too.
I noticed that GB’s Brownie comment (heck of a job) has made it into the ‘cultural lingo’:
last night on Law and Order the comment was used to express sarcastic approval for a job badly-done.
ellen