Harvey Sees Nonexistent 6 Foot Tall Reporters.

"Are you happy with FEMA's response, so far?"

"I'm very happy with FEMA's response so far. This is a FEMA and a federal government that's leaning forward, not waiting to react. And you have to be pretty pleased to see that." - FEMA to FEMA, October 23, 2007

We've all heard the stories of Richard Nixon muttering to himself and to portraits of past presidents in the last days of his term. Little would even the most cynical of us ever imagine that the same thing would happen to an entire agency that effectively had sealed off the media and the American public from its soliloquy.

Last Tuesday, FEMA had literally staged a press conference that was intended to impart information about the wildfires in Southern California. The nerf ball questions put to FEMA Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson were not from the press, as FEMA would've had you believe, but from FEMA staffers themselves.

The reason they were able to get away with this is that they gave the press 15 minutes to arrive before they had to answer these urgent softball questions. Plainly, 15 minutes wasn't enough time for them to get there. So FEMA staged their shadow puppet play while giving the press an 800 number (they weren't allowed to ask questions). So it beggars the question: What was FEMA hiding this time around while California was burning down and what were they afraid the real press was going to ask?

Dana Perino's take on this, typically, was priceless:

“It is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House or that we -- we certainly don't condone it.”

I guess Dana didn't get the memo about the Bush administration a couple of years ago literally paying to have fake news stories planted in Iraqi newspapers or the one about the Pentagon six years ago starting up the supposedly disbanded OSI (Office of Strategic Influence), which job it also was to fabricate news to be passed off as the real thing. But that's OK, Dana Bash the Liberals: We understand there's a high learning curve over at the Ministry of Propaganda.

If nothing else, this "news" story perfectly delineates the hermetic insularity of a White House that steadfastly refuses to listen to anyone but Yes Men insiders. It also flawlessly represents the contempt that the White House and its agencies feel for what is nonetheless an endlessly criminally compliant press (and Noron O'Donnell's apparent amusement at this whole thing alone would almost justify such contempt) and an equal contempt for the intelligence of the American people.

It also captures in a candid snapshot the sheer superficiality of an administration made of tinsel, one that guided people to food tables when they were in need of clothes and then had the food and water aid stations broken down and, later, lights getting shut off the minute George W. Bush was out of camera range.