"Don't Get Stuck on Stupid, Reporters"

Conservatives are rolling in the aisles this morning chuckling about LtGen Honore’s advice to the media
yesterday. “Don’t get stuck on stupid, reporters,”
he advised.
Honore and Mayor Nagin
were trying to advertise information about buses for evacuation of New Orleans
in advance of hurricane Rita. But reporters wanted to talk about why the
preparation for this hurricane was different that the preparation for hurricane
Katrina.

So LtGen Honore decided to treat the highly objective new media like they
were dumb recruits in basic training. He wanted to get a clear message out to
the people of New Orleans. Things like: Here is where the buses will be. They will take you
out of town. Period. He didn’t want to be retailing rumors about where the buses
might be, as one reporter asked. He wanted to use the news media as a medium
of communication. So help me, news media, he gently and respectfully asked.
Help me get this message out to save lives in the city of New Orleans.

Now you would think that the news media would be buzzing with reports about the,
er, plain talk from LtGen Honore. After all, they loved John McCain and his
“Straight Talk Express” in 2000. But no. If you look at
Google News on the morning of September 21, 2005, all you see is
entries from conservative blogs. No MSM in sight. Now why would that be?