Michael Brown Is a Little Bitch:
On Sunday, August 28, Michael Brown, then the Chief of FEMA, told CNN about the impending landfall of Hurricane Katrina, "[W]e actually started preparing for this about two years ago. We had decided to start doing catastrophic disaster planning and the first place we picked to do that kind of planning was New Orleans because we knew from experience, based back in the '40s and even in the late 1800s, if a category five or five hurricane were to strike New Orleans just right, the flooding would be devastating. It could be catastrophic. So we did this planning two years ago. And actually there's a tabletop exercise with the Louisiana officials about a year ago. So the planning's been in place now. We're ready for the storm...

"We are ready, we're going to respond, and we're going to do exactly what we did in Florida and Alabama and the other places. We're going to do whatever it takes to help victims. That's why we've already declared an emergency. President Bush had no reservations about doing that. We're going to lean forward as possible and do everything we can to help those folks in Louisiana or Alabama or Mississippi." And then he advised everyone to get the hell out of there. Goddamn, it's good to know they were ready, workin' on it for two whole years. Imagine what would have happened if Brown and FEMA had been unprepared. The federal government might have just shot every survivor of the storm and blown up the Superdome and Convention Center, dancing while the French Quarter burned.

When Brown appeared before the Republican House panel "investigating" the clusterfuck that was the response to Katrina, he decided the best tactic was to be a little bitch, a tiny cocksucker, a bureaucrat who did his "job." Well, shit, maybe Brownie's right. Maybe it's not that the man wasn't up to the job. Maybe it was that the job had been reduced to the size of the man, and that man is, to be sure, a little bitch.

Michael Brown is a little bitch because he said that the two things he wished he had done better were to hold more press conferences and to "persuade Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences and work together." It's the government equivalent of "I just care too much." Michael Brown is a little bitch because he refused almost all blame - indeed, except for a brief mention of the raping of FEMA in folding it into the Department of Homeland Security, he believes that he "did a darn good job." And yet Brown bragged about FEMA being ready on CNN despite the fact that he knew, as he said in the hearing, "we did the catastrophic planning a year ago and had no money, since then, to do anything."

Michael Brown is a little bitch because he expressed no sorrow about the deaths of hundreds of people, whose corpses are still being found or have been eaten or swept into the lake or river, even when he was reminded of them during the hearing. He's a little bitch because he did such a good job covering for his masters in the Bush administration, especially after Karl Rove probably put a dozen Arabian horse heads in his bed after Brown allegedly went to the National Enquirer with the story that the President's been suckin' back whiskey like the chief chowder eater at a blow job convention. Except for one moment, when Brown said, "[P]erhaps I'm not as brave as some people say I am because I probably should have just resigned my post earlier and gone public with some of these things," or, in other words, "I am a little bitch."

Oh, Rude Pundit, you may ask, what do you mean by "little bitch"? Why, the Rude Pundit would answer, a little bitch is a small dog, the kind that shits on your floor, rips up your sneakers, and pisses all over your books and then looks at you all little and bitch-like as if to say, "C'mon, look at me. I'm a little bitch. It's my job to fuck shit up. What else would you expect from a little bitch like me?" And, in fact, the little bitch has a point. But if you feed it, most of the time that little bitch'll do what you say, until the next time the little bitch tears your apartment to shreds.

And as for the Republicans on the panel (which was boycotted by the Democractic leadership of the House) who berated Michael Brown? Well, who's more pathetic? The little bitch or the person who beats the little bitch? Shit, that's a fuckin' toss-up, innit? Sure, sure, Christopher Shays attempted to look beyond Brownie, saying, "I have come to the conclusion that this administration values loyalty more than anything else, more than competence or, frankly, more than the truth." But, being Republicans and fearing a visit by Karl Rove's Sodomizin' Storm Troopers, any real attack on the Bush administration was, at best, postponed; at worst, shit-canned.

In the end, Michael Brown is a little bitch because he's behaved like the President, Donald Rumsfeld, and all the other little bitches that populate the White House: he decided it was all about him and saving his ass at the expense of whatever asses got in his way. Whether defending his fuckin' resume', railing at the media bein' mean meanies to him, or taking a shit on local authorities, Brownie was aces, as far as he was concerned, although, he said, "I'm not here to point blame. I'm not here to point fingers."

What we learn from the Brownie Dialogues is that 1) the Bush administration seriously undermined the effectiveness of an effective agency, 2) that Congressional oversight ain't just fer after disasters - it's that branch's fuckin' duty, and, finally, 3) Michael Brown is a little bitch. In times past, he'd've fallen on his sword somewhere in the middle of the brackish flood waters of New Orleans, accepting his fate as he disappeared into a swirl of sewage and ruin, but such grace is no longer possible in the time of mid-level bureaucrat, Peter Principle'd into uselessness, flailing in his chair as he swats at imaginary flies without realizing that the failure is within himself.

As the man said, "The bed that you make/ That’s the one you gotta lie on/ When you point, your finger cos your plan fell through/ You got three more fingers pointing back at you." And, well, they also point at everyone behind you, too.