Today In Bad Ideas

Also to be filed under Catastrophic Ignorance of Symbolism. FEMA official offers payback to NOLA residents by way of a dunk tank at the Broadmoor Neighborhood Festival:

For $5, residents of one of the city's hardest hit neighborhoods received three tennis balls Saturday - and a chance to vent 15 months of frustration at the slow pace of rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina.

The object of their annoyance sat perched atop a dunk tank - Bob Josephson, director of intergovernmental affairs in Louisiana for the reviled and much-lampooned Federal Emergency Management Agency.

…After spending nearly 45 minutes in the dunking booth, FEMA's Josephson took off his sopping shirt and tried to warm himself with a towel.

He explained that FEMA is a part of the community and allowing himself to be dunked was an attempt to show that he and his much-criticized colleagues are not so different from their neighbors.

You know, the thing that actually does make old Bob and "his much-criticized colleagues" so different from their neighbors is that "their neighbors" didn’t get relief from the water after 45 minutes.

"It's all in good fun," he added, as residents thanked him and offered dry clothes and a place to change.

Mmm, indeed. Good fun. Perhaps not so much for those who don’t live in Broadmoor, which has "one of the highest [renovation] percentages among the city’s flooded areas." Perhaps not so much fun for the residents of NOLA who are still displaced, or those who can’t even spare $5 to "vent 15 months of frustration." Meh.

(Via Dr. Bloor at Blue Meme, who’s decidedly unimpressed, too.)