READER ELIZABETH KING EMAILS:

I haven’t had much chance to watch TV or read the papers, because even here in central Mississippi, there is just too doggone much to do, trying to cope with refugees and track down missing family on the Coast and wait in line for gasoline, etc., etc. But the little I have seen, especially on national TV, is weird and bizarre, with all the fingerpointing and self-righteous pontificating going on from the talking heads.

These guys and gals need to get a clue. Today’s story is not: “What went wrong and who can we blame?” — that story can wait for tomorrow. Today the story is: “What are the obstacles preventing help from arriving and what can we do to solve them?” Some of these people are reporting like they’ve never been through a natural disaster, like they have no idea of the logistical nightmares that occur when power, water, communications systems and transportation systems literally disappear overnight. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who are disgusted with much of the national TV coverage. For God’s sake, please tell them to save the finger-pointing and blame game for when the immediate disaster is over.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Quite a lot of readers think that The Weather Channel is doing a much better job than the cable news folks, which isn’t surprising. Meanwhile Mickey Kaus has the commentators’ angle figured out:

I’m not saying Bush and the Feds don’t clearly deserve major grief for not getting today’s National Guard aid convoy into downtown New Orleans a couple of days earlier. Some people are probably dead as a result. But the commentators on Washington Week in Review seemed a little too happy when proclaiming this a “debacle” that will damage Bush politically for a long, long time. And I don’t think they were happy just because Bush has suffered a blow. I think it’s because the hurricane and its New Orleans aftermath at least seemed to solve a big problem for anti-Bush commentators and politicians. Previously, they couldn’t grouse about the Iraq War without seeming defeatist (and anti-liberationist and maybe even selfishly isolationist). Even the Clintons never figured a way out of that trap. But nature has succeded where they failed; it has opened up a way out, at least temporarily. Now Bush opponents can argue, in some cases quite accurately, that without the Iraq deployment aid would have gotten to New Orleans faster. And ‘if we can [tk] in Iraq, why can’t we [tk] in our own South?’ They aren’t being selfish. They are just asserting priorities! In short, Katrina gives them a way to talk about Iraq without talking about Iraq. No wonder Gwen Ifill smiles the “inner smile.”

Yes, I think he’s got that exactly right.