Serious

Much like his boss, Brown was repeatedly kicked up stairs with each successive failure.

Brown was pleasant enough, if a bit opportunistic, Jones said, but he did not put enough time and energy into his job. "He would have been better suited to be a small city or county lawyer," he said. Jones was surprised Brown was being considered for job at FEMA but figured it wasn't impossible he could have risen high enough in local and state government to be considered for a job directing FEMA operations in Oklahoma.

The agents quickly corrected him. This was a national post in Washington, deputy director of FEMA, the arm of the federal government that prepares for and responds to disasters around the United States.

Jones looked at the agents, "You're surely kidding?"

Madame Cura and I watched "Nine Innings From Ground Zero" last night, an HBO program on the role that baseball played in helping us learn to cheer once again in the weeks following September 11, 2001. It's a moving film, and it was a jolt to be reminded just what an opportunity George W. Bush had back then. When he threw the first ball out at Yankee Stadium before Game Three of the World Series (after Derek Jeter pulled his chain by telling him that New York fans would boo him if he didn't throw from the rubber and hit the catcher's mitt without a bounce), he was in a position to lead a united nation; he was given the benefit of the doubt by the opposition to drop the partisanship that had resulted from the disputed election and Bush's obsession with tax cuts and other benefits for his cronies.

But, under Karl Rove's tutoring, he threw all that away with as much force as he threw out that first pitch. 9-11, he and his supporters are fond of saying, changed everything. But, when we see more tax cuts, more cronies given top jobs, more politicizing of that horrible day, it's obvious that 9-11 changed very little.