Last night, I watched a movie which instantly joined Shane and Clint Eastwood‘s Unforgiven as one of my favorite Westerns. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, James Stewart plays Ransom Stoddard, a lawyer who thinks he can deal with Liberty Valance, a bloodthirsty bandit, through the law, but ends up facing him in a gun battle. Legend has it that he shot Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), but in reality, hiding in the shadows, Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) fires the bullet that finishes off the villain. When, years later, Stoddard returns to the town for Doniphon’s funeral, he tells the press the true story, the editor of the Shinbone Star refuses to use it, saying “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

It seems in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina, the MSM is not much different from its fictional counterpart. In this case, the media made the legend–that President Bush and the federal government failed miserably in response to this once-in-a-century catastrophe. As the resignation earlier today of FEMA head Michael Brown indicates, the federal response was far from perfect, but as this blog (e.g., here, here and here) and others have shown, local agencies made the lion’s share of mistakes in the evacuation and recovery efforts.

But, despite this evidence, the MSM continues to report the legend. In an AP article today, Jennifer Loven notes that the president visited New Orleans today with “New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco — both of whom have criticized the federal response.” Ms. Loven focuses only on criticism of the president and neglects to mention that many have criticized those two individuals for flawed city and state responses (respectively) to the disaster.
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Earlier today, a reader Instant Messaged me noting that the site was down. He wondered if it was related to the blackouts here in LA. Well, my neighborhood was spared the blackout. And by the time I set off to run a few errands, the power was back on across LA, but when I tuned into talk radio, every station was covering the hour or so loss of power as if it were a major catastrophe. LA Blogger Matt Szabo noted that the news media snapped “into car-chase mode as the melodrama unfolded.” I highly recommend Matt’s coverage of the “catastrophe,” for as he so wisely observes, “Few things are funnier than watching an inconvenience covered as a crisis.”

Our winner is….

Anderson Cooper – CNN

And in celebration… Charging Rhino sent this article about Cooper’s coverage of Katrina.

Unanchored – New York Metro

Anderson Cooper’s on-air breakdown was an honest expression of his complicated personality—and a breakthrough for the future of television news.

View full results of poll here.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In this post on Chris Matthew’s Hardblogger, Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President Joe Solmonese shows his true colors, as an activist more concerned with the agenda of the left than as a leader committed to gay and lesbian issues. Weighing in yet again on the Roberts’ nomination, he writes that “the Human Rights Campaign joined the growing chorus of those speaking out in opposition to the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts.” He neglects to mention that this “growing chorus” of opposition largely includes only voices from the far left (with an a handful of extreme right-wingers thrown in). And his piece merely rehashes the standard left-wing arguments against the good judge’s confirmation.

Moreover, in the entire piece, he makes only two references (three, if we count AIDS) to gay issues. In his first comment, he contends that Roberts

dismisses the “so-called right to privacy” and by doing so not only threatens reproductive freedoms but also threatens the legal underpinnings to Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned laws that effectively labeled gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans as criminals.

He offers no evidence, only interpretation to suggest that as Chief Justice, Judge Roberts would overturn Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court decision which found that state sodomy laws violated the Constitution. And once again, he brings up “reproductive freedoms,” probably in deference to his previous employer, but not an issue appropriate to a gay and lesbian organization.
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