At FEMA Your IQ Must Be Below This Line
Weekly commentary by CBS Evening News chief Washington correspondent and Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer.
The last time I was at Disney World, they had sticks of a certain height stuck in the ground with signs that said something like: "You must be this tall to ride this ride."
FEMA, the disaster relief agency, must use a variation of that to hire its public relations staff.
Somewhere on their employment application form there must be a clause that says "Your IQ must be below a certain level to work here."
How else to explain FEMA's action last week when it staged a phony news conference where its employees posed as reporters and threw softball questions to agency leaders so they could tell us what a good job they were doing at the California fires?
Mind you, this is the same FEMA once headed by Michael Brown - he of "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" fame - that fell on its face during Katrina. While New Orleans drowned, Brownie's PR people busied themselves by E-mailing Brownie to roll up his sleeves before TV interviews so it would look like he was working hard.
Department of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff said he found the phony news conference offensive, and, since it is an emergency relief outfit, I have some emergency suggestions for him.
Fire these people and the people who hired them and then explain to the new people that the best way for a disaster relief agency to get good publicity is to do a good job helping disaster victims.
As part of a massive new PR campaign you might even consider taking the PR staff from behind their desks and sending them to deliver food and water to the fire victims.
Now that would make a great story.
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By Bob Schieffer
Copyright 2009 CBS. All rights reserved. The last time I was at Disney World, they had sticks of a certain height stuck in the ground with signs that said something like: "You must be this tall to ride this ride."
FEMA, the disaster relief agency, must use a variation of that to hire its public relations staff.
Somewhere on their employment application form there must be a clause that says "Your IQ must be below a certain level to work here."
How else to explain FEMA's action last week when it staged a phony news conference where its employees posed as reporters and threw softball questions to agency leaders so they could tell us what a good job they were doing at the California fires?
Mind you, this is the same FEMA once headed by Michael Brown - he of "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" fame - that fell on its face during Katrina. While New Orleans drowned, Brownie's PR people busied themselves by E-mailing Brownie to roll up his sleeves before TV interviews so it would look like he was working hard.
Department of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff said he found the phony news conference offensive, and, since it is an emergency relief outfit, I have some emergency suggestions for him.
Fire these people and the people who hired them and then explain to the new people that the best way for a disaster relief agency to get good publicity is to do a good job helping disaster victims.
As part of a massive new PR campaign you might even consider taking the PR staff from behind their desks and sending them to deliver food and water to the fire victims.
Now that would make a great story.
By Bob Schieffer
You definitely need to get out of your cave for a just a little while each day.
Schieffer is one of the most rational comentators in the media.
Forget the organization, reconstruct America instead.
The group has degenerated from a civilian service organization to a Pentagon wing of the military. They only serve the president''s wishes.
Recently, they awarded Halliburton''s KBR nearly $400 million to build detention camps here in the USA - WHY?
There is no real outrage, though, so they really got away with it. One of these days FEMA will grow up and become a real emergency services organization.... I hope.
Yes there are some very good people in public service and governement jobs. I have worked with many. But sadly the numbers are dwindling. It used to be that an ambitious and talented person could do public service and gain experience in government jobs and having worked for an agency was a plus even though the pay might be a little lower. Unfortunately now government agencies have a bad rep, so for example a few years as a manager for FEMA doesn''t help your career now like it used to. And that attitude is hurting FEMA and agencies when they try to hire people: it is a vicious cycle.