Anarchy and Chaos! (At Fox News)

While the suits in the studio (I'm talking to you, Mr. Hannity) are toeing the party line on the situation in New Orleans, the reporters in the field, who are seeing with their own eyes, are going off message.

Crooks and Liars has an amazing piece of video in which Sean Hannity tries mightily to spin the situation positively. Shepard Smith, who's usually just another Fox hack, and who's "seeing this and smelling it", as he says in the video, is clearly at the end of his rope, and Geraldo Rivera says the convention center is "like Willowbrook". "It's as if time has stopped and it's still Wednesday," he says, right before completely falling apart. Rivera may have an often inappropriate operatic style, but damn if he isn't effective here.

Meanwhile, Smith reveals that people are now LOCKED in the Superdome and the Convention Center, and that people are NOT being permitted to even walk away. These people are being held prisoner in a ruined city. Hannity tries mightily to focus on the military convoys carrying supplies, but Smith isn't buying it, and he looks as if he'd strangle Hannity with his bare hands if he could.

It's a pretty big download, but it's worth the wait.

Americablog reports on Greta Van Susteren departing from script:

And now I'm watching Greta interview a young man (maybe high school age 16-19 or so). He went to a school yard, commandeered a school bus ("You stole it," said Greta bluntly), went around picking people up until it was full and then drove them to Houston because that's where the radio said refugees should go. They pooled money to pay for gas. Think about this for a moment. One young man who had never even driven a bus before in his life acted on his own and was able to get dozens of people safely away and drive them to another state. (The laughable finale was that they were initially refused entry because refugees were supposed to show up in Greyhound buses, not school buses.) Greta called his story inspiring.

Props especially here go to Shepard Smith, who is usually a dutiful mouthpiece for the Bush Administration, but when faced with the choice between "Who ya gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes", chose his own eyes.

I would like to believe that all the so-called "journalists" who over the last five years have traded their integrity for access to this White House have their mojo back, and we'll start seeing the critical, honest coverage of this Administration that it so richly deserves.

And while you're online with your wallet open, please toss a few shekels in the direction of Crooks and Liars, whose archiving of footage like this is invaluable.