What he said

I recently read an interview, with Howell Raines, in New York magazine. For those who don't know or don't remember (the media is so fickle), Raines was the executive editor at the venerable New York Times before he was forced out because he got hoodwinked by Jayson Blair and was a casualty of that scandal.

Raines is a southern boy, Alabama born and bred. His son Jeff lives in New Orleans where part of the interview takes place.

Raines and the New York reporter are fishing in New Orleans and of course the conversation drifts to Katrina. They are driving around the Ninth Ward discussing the situation and how other presidents would have reacted.

Raines says, "Think what Eisenhower would have done with this! You have to entertain the possibility that Bush can't think his way through problems like this. Here's a family that has had every benefit that American Society can offer for four generations - wealth, education, social position - and they have no impulse toward repaying anything back to this society that has been so generous to them. Faulkner talks about the human heart in conflict. Well, I see no evidence of conflict in their hearts. Just meanness."

Amen. I've never heard it said better. Those people, the Bushes and their cronies, are so fortunate and yet they have no rochmanis - empathy, compassion. That above all else is what makes them so hateful.