A Climate of Slander

The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, established last May by President Obama, released its final report on January 11. The Scrapbook was pleased to see that tow-headed CNN anchorperson Anderson Cooper, who spent hour after lachrymose hour broadcasting grim news from the Gulf Shore last summer, received special recognition for his efforts. According to the commission:

Journalists encouraged state and local officials and residents to display their anger at the federal response, and offered coverage when they did. Anderson Cooper reportedly asked a Parish President to bring an angry, unemployed offshore oil worker on his show. When the Parish President could not promise the worker would be “angry,” both were disinvited.

A Cooper spokesperson told the New York Post: The claim that journalists “were encouraging residents and state and local leaders to ‘display their anger at the federal response’ is offensive.” Deeply, no doubt. ♦

The Budget’s Too Much with You

With apologies to Wordsworth, a well-known conservative emailed the following sonnet to The Scrapbook “Expressing Concern with Republicans’ Tendency to Revert to a Green-Eyeshade Obsession with Trivial Spending Cuts.” Here’s hoping this will stiffen congressional spines for going after larger game, like entitlement reform.

The budget’s too much with you; late and soon,

Obsessed with spending, you lay waste your powers:

Little we see in ideas that are ours;

You risk squandering your broad mandate, a sordid boon!

Defense cuts that bare our bosom to the moon;

The bold reforms that should be pushed at all hours,

But are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

In this, it worries me, you may be out of tune;

This moves you not.—Great God! I’d rather be

A supply-sider suckled in a creed outworn;

Then might I, sipping my fresh-brewed tea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Jack Kemp rising from the sea;

Or hear old Reagan blow his wreathed horn. ♦