Michael Brown can moo, can you?

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!"

--George Bush to Michael Brown, post-Katrina

It's never fun being the fall guy, and I'm not certain I'm being made to be the fall guy. But if being the fall guy gets done everything I want to get done, fine.

--Michael Brown, a few days later


Panegyrick to a Crony

(with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

Oh the wonderful things Michael Brown can do!
Michael Brown can go like a cow. He can go MOO MOO.
Michael Brown can do it. How about you?

He can go like the rain DIBBLE DIBBLE DIBBLE DOPP.
He can go to a hurricane HURRY UP AND STOP!
He can fake up a resume LICKETY SPLIT.
He can take the fall like a proper little s--t.

He can even be FEMA director.
He can do that, too.
Michael Brown can do it.
How about you?

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My two-year-old son is quite impressed by Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown, thinks him a remarkably accomplished gentleman -- after all, he can make a wide variety of zoo noises. So George Bush seemed equally impressed by Mr. Michael Brown. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!" A good name for the gentleman in question, given that it was precisely due to his being a brownie (in the playground sense of the term) that he became head of FEMA.

Think about it. In the wake of 9/11, Bush promises to do everything in his power to protect this country from such disasters in future -- to preserve the country in the aftermath of such disasters should they occur. Yet he places at the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Joe Allbaugh, a political hack (manager of the 2000 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign) who has zero experience in emergency management. And then, when Allbaugh leaves the post for greener (consulting) pastures, he replaces himself with his college bunkie Mike Brown, a man with even less experience in emergency management than he (if it is possible to have less experience than zero . . .).

If you look up "crony" in the dictionary, you'll find Brown's picture in the margin.

So how seriously are we to take Bush's sworn commitment to protecting this country from terrorist-spawned catastrophe? In this administration, cronyism always trumps policy, always trumps moral principle. Everything is grist for the (Karl)Rovian political mill, including the lives of our citizens.

Oh the wonderful things Mr. Bush can do.