Today Show Focuses on Brown Resume Flap; Scarborough Turning MSM?

Was FEMA head Mike Brown Assistant City Manager of Edmond, OK, or was he Assistant to the City Manager? And did he serve from 1975-78 or from 1977-80?

Small beer, you might think, but a heady enough brew for the Today show to lead with this morning.

Andrea Mitchell reported on a Time Magazine piece which she claimed raised "serious questions about the management training" Brown had received.

Mitchell, archly noting that Brown is "a political appointee," as if all previous FEMA directors weren't, introduced a clip from Time reporter Carolina Miranda, who stated that the "biggest discrepancy that we found . . . was the fact that the White House release listed him as an Assistant City Manager for the City of Edmond, Oklahoma from 1975-78, saying that during this time he had oversight of the emergency services division for that city and that it was vital experience to his charge as FEMA Director."

Continued Miranda: "Well, we called the city of Edmond and we found out that he actually worked there from 1977-80 and that it was as an assistant to the City Manager, which is an administrtative role, sort of an par with an intern." Miranda didn't inform us if Brown was on the payroll of Edmond, which would negate the "intern" allegation.

Mitchell then ran clips unflattering to Brown. The first suggested he was unaware of the problems at the Superdome long after the public knew of them. A second clip came from a "former FEMA official" John Copenhaver, who Mitchell failed to identify as a former Clinton appointee. Copenhaver was apparently on record warning about potential natural disasters.

Then it was on to a Matt Lauer interview of former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, who had represented the Florida Panhandle and is now the host of MSNBC's 'Scarborough Country.'

Observing Scarborough on this and other occasions, I get the sense that, rather than being motivated by any truly maverick sentiments, Scarborough is more interested in crafting an independent image for himself.

Interestingly, he managed to position himself to the carping left of Lauer. In his opening question, Matt was willing to cut the Bush administration some slack, pointedly asking Joe to comment on the its Katrina response "after the first 48 hours," and itemizing the various trips that W and high administration officials have made to the region in recent days, W's large relief proposal and his promise to cut red tape.

But Scarborough wasn't buying. "It's very hard to take those 48 hours out of it," he inveighed, going on to recite a laundry list of shortcomings in the federal response.

If you closed your eyes, you might have thought it was Howard Dean or another member of the Barking Moonbat Society who came out with this beauty: "the President, the entire administration, like the governors Haley Barbour and Blanco, all appeared to be napping for at least three, four days, and people died because of it."

Joe, Joe - are you going MSM on us?

Finkelstein has degrees from Cornell University and Harvard Law
School.He lives in Ithaca, NY where he hosts "Right Angle," a local
political talk show. Finkelstein specializes in exposing liberal bias
at NBC's Today Show.