We must be fair and balanced. The first debunking efforts were undertaken under the most inauspicious conditions. Officials were only accorded one side of a TV screen to explain to Americans that the live feeds taking place on the other side of the screen showed not truth but rumors, reports unconfirmed by authorities.
We must understand that at this time, the only news coming from the theatre came from people on the ground in scratchy breaky phone calls, a handful of bloggers, and reporters operating without benefit of embedding or vetting.
So if there were those who may have believed those rumors regarding conditions and crimes in the shelter pits into which crowded those New Orleanians politically naive enough to believe that they and their families would be safer than on the roof, if there were those who may have lent credence to rumors of slow responses from various government agencies, before they are denounced as un American consider the difficulties under which their leaders were operating at the moment.
Things have turned the corner now, and only a handful of dead enders and the people who survived the experience believe these rumors now.
Loyal Americans understand that while conditions in dome and center may not have been luxurious, nor on the expressway, things were not all that bad, and of course there were no crimes, no one was prevented from escape, people were not really dying of heat stroke or thirst or lack of medicine. Those are just rumors. Like the rumors of the 1927 replay of the canal strategy that flooded the city's poor area to save the fine homes in the Garden District and the historic French Quarter, both seen as keepers by those who are already hard at work planning the new and improved New Orleans. All the old world charm without the pesky poor.
And after a few territorial squabbles, federal, state and local officials are at last on the same page, and working together to craft a reasonable death toll that while tragic, will not prove too disturbing to more sensitive viewers.
One of the most comforting steps taken in recent days is the President's vow to personally oversee an investigation into any possible glitches that may have taken place in the response to the disaster.
His advisors, including the formidable Mr. Rove, wasted no time in developing a strategy to reassure the more skittish segment of the American public that their government had things firmly in hand, and would keep it that way.
That, coming on the heels of not one, but two Presidential flyovers of the area, and even one touchdown visit to console local politicians.
The egalitarian nature of the nation, and the President's concern for the humblest of his subjects cannot be more clearly illustrated than these flyovers. The Presidential aircraft could be seen by those fortunate enough to have successfully made an opening in their roofs, those on the expressways, those outside the shelterpits, and we can only imagine how much the sight must have meant to them, as they sat there, gasping. For many it will have been the last sight they saw.
Is it any wonder that not even Kim Jung Il enjoys deeper affection from his people?
So the corner is turned, but there is still much hard work ahead. Popular pundit Michelle Malkin, thoughtful as usual, expressed the hope that potentially troublesome eyewitnesses would be excluded from any investigation, which should, she declared, be a private affair, unburdened by any media who might not have recovered completely from the rumors and unconfirmed reports they thought they saw.
The survivor diaspora will be most helpful in avoiding such an eventuality, as well as the tragic but inevitable passing of many of them, if not from effects of the original rumors, from the second wave of rumors of West Nile, hepatitis, and the kinder gentler cholera promised by corporate charity mavens.
After having written checks to the Red Cross to help their executives maintain the lifestyle to which they are accustomed, and thus proving their compassion to their poor brethren in need, and a few hours of volunteer work down at the shelter, where too often, Lord and Lady Bountiful are horrified and repulsed to learn that the less fortunate are not sufficiently schooled in the soft skills to demonstrate appropriate gratitude for having been allowed to escape with their lives, if not their health, or all their family members, right thinking Americans will soon be free to return their focus on the positive:
US gunmen continue to occupy and reduce the population in two countries openly, and the public can rest assured that covert operations are also taking place elsewhere, and on the storm front, now that the rumors have been debunked, yes, there was a hurricane, and quite a bit of property damage, but the good news is that both Halliburton and Bechtel, among others, will be putting their expertise to work to make it right, and Halliburton will be raising all its prices in October, good news for investors!
And God, speaking as he does, through Bush, as revealed by Bush himself, has issued an executive order empowering these fine wealth builders to shake off the burden of oppressive laws requiring the paying of prevailing wages, meaning that survivors who are still at large in the area will be able to obtain work which will provide them with dignity, and possibly up to a dollar or two above the minimum wage.
So all in all, yes there was a little wind, and sadly, a few lost their lives. But rumors of devastation and catastrophe, of genocide and slaveship hells, of rape and murder and mutilation, of thousands gasping their last on the asphalt of I-10, were just that- rumors, probably started by a certain element with an agenda.
Just a little wind, but everything is being made right now, with the consent of the governed.
