Fishing for Complaints

Did you happen to catch the Presidential address last night? While the speech was beautiful and extremely well written, my favorite part came afterwards. I took a break from watching Jon's beloved Horned Frogs win a nail-biter against Utah (snapping the country's second longest winning streak), but I digress...

I watched the speech on ABC. After Koppel?s weird-voiced follow up, he tossed it to a correspondent stationed outside the Houston Astrodome where he was with a group of evacuees from New Orleans who had just finished watching the President?s address together. One by one he asked the Louisiana natives what they thought of the speech. Did they find hope in anything the President said tonight? After several positive responses (and zero negative), he started trying to bait them into basing Bush.

Did you think the President was sincere?

"Yes"

Do you really think you will be able to go back to your home?

"Yes"

Why?

"Because I believe what he said tonight"

Was there anything the President said tonight that made you think ?Well that was some nice rhetoric, but the proof is in the pudding??

?No.?

He was stunned. He tried a different approach. What was the one mistake that could have prevented some of these problems? One woman said she didn?t take the evacuation seriously and could have left earlier. Another woman laid into the local and state government for not using the federal funds they have had for years to bolster the dike. Another actually said she blames the mayor of New Orleans personally. It made me feel so warm and fuzzy to see the MSM squirm as their devious tactics backfired on them. By the way, the entire audience outside the Astrodome was African-American.

Posted by Selby at September 16, 2005 02:41 PM