And the Katrina-blame game goes on. Today’s participants were country music stars Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. During a news conference on Thursday, the couple began lashing out over the “slow” response to the hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast last August. And, of course, President Bush was right in the crosshairs.
As reported by ABC News (with a hat tip to Drudge): “Faith Hill and Tim McGraw — two stars who usually stay out of politics — blasted the Hurricane Katrina cleanup effort, with Hill calling the slow progress in Louisiana and Mississippi ‘embarrassing’ and ‘humiliating.’”
The article continued:
“'To me, there's a lot of politics being played and a lot of people trying to put people in bad positions in order to further their agendas,’ McGraw, a 38-year-old native of Delhi, La., told ABC News Radio.
“‘When you have people dying because they're poor and black or poor and white, or because of whatever they are — if that's a number on a political scale — then that is the most wrong thing. That erases everything that's great about our country.’"
And mercilessly continued:
“McGraw specifically criticized President Bush. ‘There's no reason why someone can't go down there who's supposed to be the leader of the free world … and say, 'I'm giving you a job to do and I'm not leaving here until it's done. And you're held accountable, and you're held accountable, and you're held accountable.’”
Yep. It’s really that simple, Tim. Hill also apparently had little faith:
“'It is a huge, huge problem and it's embarrassing,’ she said.
“‘I fear for our country if we can't handle our people [during] a natural disaster. And I can't stand to see it. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out point A to point B. . . . And they can't even skip from point A to point B.
“‘It's just screwed up.’"
At the end of the article, we got a glimpse of this couple’s future:
“In 2004, [McGraw] actually told Time magazine, however lightheartedly, that he was thinking of going into politics. ‘I want to run for the Senate from Tennessee … Not now, but when I'm 50, when the music dies down.’
“‘Wouldn't Faith make a great senator's wife?’ he joked.”
Actually, no Tim. I think you should both stick to music.
Yet, this makes one wonder if this isn’t a foreshadowing of a Democratic plan for the midterm elections: get country musicians to lash out against the president over Katrina to appeal to red state voters.
Hmmm.