Wonkette

In today’s Pool Report from the First Lady detachment, the Chicago Tribune’s Mark Silva fearlessly trails the First Lady through a riot of post-Katrina product placement: She taped a special Biloxi-based edition of “Extreme Makeover,” to be aired in December, in which a New Orleans resident whose home was the subject of a pre-Katrina makeover, does some relief work for homeless evacuees. It’s part of the show’s “Pay It Forward” series–a nice cross-branding touch, that; evidently the treacly Kevin Spacey Haly Joel Osment vehicle will not be permitted a decent burial in the media marketplace. The Sears American Dream Campaign puts in an appearance, distributing “half-million dollars of needed goods,” though it’s unclear from the report whether this is the same as the Sears “Caravan of Caring,” which also gets a mention. (We confess we’re curious about the rejected protoype names for this project: Sears’ Truckloads of Tenderness? Sears’ Buttloads of Benficence?) We’ll leave you with this vignette:

Inside a producer calls into a crowd of dozens of people picking through Rubbermaid-like but this is no actual product I D, bins to be ready but not too obvious for her entry.

Evidently Rubbermaid won’t get a confirmed mention till a check to Sears is in the mail. Whole thing after the jump. –HOLLY MARTINS

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Bush’s belated and brief visit to the areas hit by Katrina may also have been bogus. In an open letter to Bush, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu questions why the equipment to repair levee damage that had been so plentiful when the President arrived, wasn’t there the next day:

Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.

And German television crew claims to have witnessed clean-up crews show up specifically to be photographed with Bush in Biloxi. Of course, they’re German, so who knows:

All of a sudden the rescue troops finally showed up, the clean-up vehicles; we didn’t see those over the last days here. In an area where it really isn’t urgent, there is nobody around, all the remaining people went to the city center.

Great. Maybe he can feed the refugees plastic turkeys. MORE »