[cross posted from Frameshop --JF]
As Americans continued to suffer under his failed leadership, yesterday, President Bush revealed once more how his shocking lack of basic human kindness results in tears and anger.
At around 10:00am Sunday morning, President Bush commandeered the Operations Center of the American Red Cross for a public relations event.
In this `visit,' as the White House billed it, the President delivered a two-minute speech dripping with his signature folksy talk and cryptic doublespeak:
I've come to the Red Cross to...thank the good folks here who are working here...I told some folks back there that the world saw this tidal wave of disaster ascend upon the Gulf Coast, and now they're going to see a tidal wave of compassion. There's over 5,000 Red Cross -- or nearly 5,000 Red Cross volunteers that are working long hours at shelters in 19 states to help these folks that have been displaced get their feet back on the ground.
(read the entire speech here)
Americans have long-since learned to recognize that when President Bush starts with his awe-shucks routine and too-tricky-for-me metaphors, it can only mean one thing: that Karl Rove--President Bush's propaganda Wizard of Oz--is once again behind the black curtain pulling all the strings.
In a telltale sign that the President's political spin team is now running the White House hurricane relief plan, the President repeated the word `compassion' five-times in this short speech--repetition being Karl Rove's favorite technique to "catapult the propaganda" onto the front pages and into the mouths of Americans.
Meanwhile, as the President's exploited the Red Cross for political gain, American leaders directly involved in the Gulf rescue efforts collapsed in tears and anger, seemingly exhausted in their efforts to get the President to put people ahead of politics for the sake of American lives.
During a Sunday morning interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu burst into tears. Looking at hurricane damage to homes on the Gulf coast and flood damage to downtown New Orleans, Landrieu expressed outrage and anguish that her calls for assistance from the Federal government were ignored for days on end.
But the most emotional moment came when Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard literally seized up with tears during a nationally televised interview with Tim Russert on Sunday's Meet the Press:
They're burned out, the doctors, the nurses. And I want to give you one last story and I'll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night....Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.
(read the full transcript here)
Most Americans who watched Aaron Broussard break down in tears will probably admit that it was one of the most emotional moments they have ever witnessed on TV. The raw anguish of every American came out in his choking, exhausted words.
And as he held his head in tears--sobbing in disbelief that an elderly American drowned in her own home because the help promised to her by the President never arrived--every American with a conscience wept with him.
It is in the face of these American tears and this American anger that the White House seemed concerned with saving only one drowning man: President Bush sinking at the polls.
© 2005 Jeffrey Feldman