The Good News... and the Bad

The good news is that early reports are that the death toll in New Orleans may be far less than the intial estimates of over 10,000 dead.

That would be wonderful. It won't lessen the impact on the thousands who have lost everything they had, but at least they are still alive.

The bad news is that the press are being kept out of the city and will not be allowed in while the body retreival and counting is going on. Once again, the reason being given for this SOUNDS very reasonable: Provide dignity and respect for the dead by not allowing their bodies to be used as sensationalism on the news.

However, the side effect (a cynical person such as myself might suspect the intended effect) will be to prevent anyone from confirming or disputing the official numbers. And as the fed's spin machine grinds into high gear trying to misdirect attention from any culpability in the administration and its policies, there's all sorts of motive for wanting to keep the count of dead on the low side.

After all, slow response times leading to major deaths are the sorts of things that get Presidents impeached. Breached levees because of slashed budgets only really stir up the ire of the few, and are also much easier to spin away when all that was lost was PROPERTY, not LIVES.

Look, this President has got a majority of the nation believing he isn't truthful to them. His approval rating coming into this crisis was in the mid 30% range, which is down in the range that Nixon was at the height of the Watergate scandal. If the left wing had engaged in a huge smear campaign and the President had been nothing but truthful, one would think that having free and open access to information would work to the administration's advantage.

There's just no reason to restrict access like this... except to control the story, sanitize the message, prevent the more gruesome details and shocking counts from ever besmirching the tv screens and furrowing the brows of the citizenry.

I do not want my access to information controlled. American doesn't need and shouldn't have a ministry of information through which news must filter. Just because it's done by preventing news media access to the news rather than by censoring the news before it can be printed doesn't make it any less heinous.

Liam.