Speaking of using taxpayer money to aggrandize the state any damned way Washington pleases, news that the Obama White House won't deign to release the photos generated by the are-you-outta-yer-MIND $328,000 flashback-inducing photo op above lower Manhattan is causing my internal inspector general to conclude that these people are themselves riddled with flaws. Check out irritating WH spokesman Robert "Smuggsy" Gibbs:I've watched CNN. I didn't notice a lack of archival material from that flight.Yeah, tee-hee, yuk-yuk, YOU WASTED SIX FIGURES ON AN UTTERLY POINTLESS STUNT THAT WE NEVER WOULD HAVE KNOWN ABOUT HAD YOU NOT SENT MANHATTAN INTO A HEART-SWALLOWING PANIC, and so let's make a joke, next question.Here's the thing: That's my money, that's your money. Who the hell was that photo supposed to even be shown to? How was that picture going to make us safer, more prosperous, more free? The only way to fully determine just how venal and gratuitous this marginal error of a publicity stunt was is to show us the damned picture, and tell us precisely where it was going to be used. And then move the camera lens back, and tell us about the 10, 20, 200, 2,000 other idiotic photo ops that are being planned for this week, this month, and this year. Yes, it's a drop in the ocean compared to the trillions in bailout money and guarantees, but that's kind of the point: This is a president who promised to go through the crisis-year budgets "line by line" looking for savings (by which he mostly meant tax increases, but still). This is a president who campaigned daily on a pledge of unprecedented transparency in government.
Treating self-evidently wasteful spending–and not just wasteful spending, but wasteful spending on propaganda, carried out in such a way as to awaken one of the biggest national nightmares of our lifetime–as some kind of wave-of-the-hand funny, not worthy of further explanation beyond a quick apology, is a revealing act of condescension. Good to see the liberal media watchdog Media Matters pinning the blame where it's deserved: On Rupert Murdoch.
Unless Obama reimburses the government out of his own pocket, WE the PEOPLE paid for those pictures and we own them. How ridiculous that the government insists those PUBLICITY pictures are somehow now too secret and special for the public to see them.
Updated: Michelle says the government has agreed to release one photograph. She has a FOIA request in for more, and I would imagine others do as well. Pin It
