Of Duct Tape and Newspapers

I hate to say it, but it's the US Army Corps of Engineers' own damn fault that the press conference they held last Saturday went so badly. After all, if you're trying to explain why you are plugging up gaps in post-Katrina New Orleans area floodwalls with newspapers, you'd think you'd want to fully explain your reasoning and technique.

Think about how much better that press conference would have gone had they mentioned that it wasn't any old newspaper they were using, it was the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, and as such, it endows the floodwall with special Biblical powers, powers on par with those found in nothing less sacred that the holy hanky (see below), itself. If they had stressed that piece of it, they might have even persuaded Moon acolytes like Orrin Hatch to lend his vast reserve of credibility to the event.

Additionally, the Corps failed to reveal that they bound the newspapers to the floodwall using the most powerful repair tool known to man, a product endowed with powers that rival even those of our Lord's--they used duct tape. Had they made a point of explaining that, they'd have put the whole episode behind them.

As it is, they'll be explaining their decision to use newspapers for weeks, and that's too bad