Bloomberg.com: Bloomberg Columnists

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&sid=ayjzS5ZIjcDg&refer=columnist_carlson"> Bloomberg.com: Bloomberg Columnists: "Bush Says OK, Blame Me; Now Let's Spend Money: Margaret Carlson Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- You know the world is out of whack when it takes resume inflation to finally move Michael Brown out of his job running the Federal Emergency Management Agency. You'd think letting thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims suffer over four days without food, water, medicine or airlifts would have prompted President George W. Bush to declare, ``Brownie, you're fired.'' Instead, it wasn't until Time magazine reported that Brown's bio listed him as assistant city manager in Edmond, Oklahoma, rather than assistant TO THE city manager, that Brown got the heave-ho from running Katrina operations on Sept. 9. He resigned from FEMA three days later. But the world is really strange when the person who was responsible accepts responsibility and that makes headlines. ``President Says He's Responsible in Storm Lapses,'' the New York Times said on its front page yesterday. Congratulations to the president were all over TV. You'd think he'd picked up a bullhorn and said he was going to get rid of anyone on whose watch those 34 invalids at St. Rita's nursing home died. Good Old Boys It took a while, but Bush realized that his default response to criticism wasn't working. Stubborn denial coupled with boyish mannerisms -- backslapping good-old boy Governor Haley Barbour, commiserating with Mississippi Senator Trent Lott about his lost mansion in Pascagoula, strumming a guitar at an event in San Diego like Tom Cruise in ``Risky Business'' -- aren't enough when we can actually see the bodies floating in black water and feel the misery of people who trusted the government to help them. It's just not going to do this time to toss off a line about trading Sammy Sosa when asked if he'd made any mistakes going after Osama."

Well Well Well...: R.L. Burnside 1926-2005

You've seen this story hundreds of times regarding old Mississippi blues artists: work as a sharecropper, drink a little, spend some time in jail (most times, Parchman Farms), have lots of kids, drink a little more, play a guitar in the few free moments you have, play in juke joints across the Delta, drink a lot more (it's free, and most times, it's your payment), entertain crowds with songs and stories, go home, have a nightcap, then get up and do it all over again. Some of the above applied to one Robert Lee Burnside, better known as R.L. (and Rule to friends and family), but his life was sometimes as atypical as his music. Burnside did work as a sharecropper, he spent six months of a two-year jail sentence in Parchman (he was released because his boss was friends with the judge, and he was needed for cotton-picking season -- he was one of the farm's best workers). By blues standards, his 13 kids were a low amount (one died over two decades ago in an auto accident). He did practice and learn to play the guitar, and had a hell of a teacher in Mississippi Fred McDowell (as well as Ranie Burnette). Of course, he played in juke joints (mostly friend and labelmate Junior Kimbrough's joint -- that is, until someone burned it down in 2000). Burnside, who died in a Memphis hospital room when the calendar switched over to September, did want and have some stability in his life, making him unlike most blues musicians in that time and place. He was married to the same woman for over 50 years (Alice Mae). He boasted that only the oldest two of his five sons ever had to pick cotton. Burnside also had a second job as a commercial fisherman (catfish, anyone?). And with all that, he learned to play the guitar.

An Anchor Who Reports Disaster News With a Heart on His Sleeve

"The CNN anchor Anderson Cooper strikes a pose in the September issue of the men's magazine Maxim, modeling a sharp black suit set off by his prematurely gray hair. A stylized jumble of broken television sets is piled high beside him. It is a very different Mr. Cooper who has captivated CNN viewers in the two weeks since Hurricane Katrina crashed ashore. The jumble of broken stuff is there, but it is real remnants of homes and lives washed away. Mr. Cooper's heart-on-his-sleeve demeanor has been anything but slick and packaged. The 38-year-old anchor has dressed down officials in interviews with polite righteous indignation in behalf of hurricane victims. At least twice he choked up on air, once abruptly stopping his commentary about lost homes and waving away the camera as he looked about to burst into tears. CNN's camera occasionally has caught him playing with stray dogs. He says he has no intention of returning to his hip New York existence any time soon. "Life is funny like that," Mr. Cooper said of the fashion spreads (he is also in Esquire this month) as he took a break on Friday in Baton Rouge, La."