"You are carrying the message, okay."

In a marvelous clash of somewhat shakey style and overwhelming substance Lt. Gen. Russel Honore took on some members of the MSM. The setting was a press conference during which Mayor Nagin was attempting to communicate emergency plans in the face of Hurricane Rita. He couldn't get the message through, so Lt. Gen. Honore took over. To the latter's surprise, the press didn't want to listen to the emergency relief plans, they wanted to discuss Katrina again, and to argue with him. It was that scenario that resulted in some incredible one-liners:

Male reporter: But General, that [the evacuation plan Honore had just announced] didn't work the first time... Honore: Wait a minute. It didn't work the first time. This ain't the first time. Okay? If...we don't control Rita, you understand? So there are a lot of pieces of it that's going to be worked out. You got good public servants working through it. Let's get a little trust here, because you're starting to act like this is your problem. You are carrying the message, okay? *** Male reporter: General, a little bit more about why that's happening this time, though, and did not have that last time... Honore: You are stuck on stupid. I'm not going to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita. This is public information that people are depending on the government to put out. This is the way we've got to do it. So please. I apologize to you, but let's talk about the future. Rita is happening. And right now, we need to get good, clean information out to the people that they can use. And we can have a conversation on the side about the past, in a couple of months.

There's more, and you can find it on Radio Blogger, but those quotations give you the magic of clear thought and forthright speech. To be honest, I think it's rude to say to someone that they're "stuck on stupid," but the fact was that this reporter was impairing Honore's ability to communicate important information to a community that's facing down another Hurricane that's just be reclassified as a Class 4 (according to the Weather Channel's latest report). For Honore to face that kind of interruption must have been beyond frustrating. Hat tip: Power Line