Years ago, I heard about a great reporter who had a sign above his desk. It said, “GOYAKOD.” When visitors asked what GOYAKOD meant, the reporter explained: “Get off your ass; knock on doors.” That’s what good reporters do.

In recent years, the American news media have seemed to embrace the rather esoteric philosophical notion that the truth is unknowable. So they sat at their anchor desks and let the spin-meisters of the two major political parties go at it on issue after issue, in an endless game of “he said, she said.” They never called a lie a lie, for fear of compromising their aura of know-nothing neutrality.

Then came Hurricane Katrina. Reporters went to the disaster zone, hoping only to capture some good visuals for the nightly news. But they saw with their own eyes that sometimes, at least, the truth is knowable. They sent shock waves through spin-numbed viewers when they challenged lies and platitudes.

The Bush White House must spin clockwise. In the northern hemisphere, a hurricane spins counter-clockwise, and Katrina has nullified the White House spin machine, for the moment. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne on inescapable accountability:

The White House is aghast because it is pulling levers that once worked, and nothing is happening.

To borrow one of [Bill] O’Reilly’s favorite phrases, New Orleans was a “No Spin Zone.” Good, smart, tough and compassionate reporters gave Americans a direct view of the disaster and kept asking, with increasing urgency, why New Orleans was such a mess.

You can tell the White House knows how much trouble it is in — that’s no doubt why Bush had another news conference yesterday — by following the Frank Theorem. “It’s a rule in American politics,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), “that whichever side denounces the other for politicizing the issue is losing the argument.” Bingo.

…

This crisis has been an exceptionally clear lesson in this White House’s overall approach: Try to get everyone to believe that any criticism of the president will blow back on the critics because Americans just don’t like that sort of thing. Attack “finger-pointing,” and make sure your allies madly point fingers at your opponents.

Say no one should play politics with a disaster — and then make sure Republican leaders in Congress set up a commission to investigate the relief effort without asking Democrats for their input on how the investigation should be carried out.

Bush’s critics aren’t backing off, because they’ve been here before. Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who cooperated with Bush in the days after Sept. 11 but lost his South Dakota seat after a long, White House-inspired campaign accusing him of being “obstructionist,” speaks from experience.

“Democrats to this day remain outraged at the blatant efforts that Republicans, especially in the administration, made to undermine the perception of our patriotism and our motivations,” Daschle said in an interview.

This time around, Democrats won’t be waved off by right-wing commentators or by contrived and insincere appeals to national unity. “I don’t think we should pay a whit of attention to administration criticisms,” Daschle said. “Democrats need to ask the hard questions and ignore the political attacks that are destined to come when we ask them.”

The sounds of contention you are hearing are the sounds of accountability in a free republic. The president may not like it, but it is a refreshing sound.

Tim Russert on the Don Imus Show:

We’ve talked to the head of the Hurricane Center at Louisiana State University, who, one year ago, did a simulated computer model — table top exercise — called “Hurricane Pam,” in which they predicted this almost to the letter. And he called FEMA and said, on Saturday or Sunday, “You have to have tent cities set up outside of New Orleans, outside the state. You’re gonna have hundreds of thousands of evacuees. You have to be able to absorb them, or they’re gonna die in the streets.”

And the FEMA said to them, “Americans don’t sleep in tents.”

That is what went wrong, and that’s what we have to find out. Who’s accountable? This notion that we’re all too busy now to look forward, we can’t look back — we can do both. Because to ignore what happened in New Orleans is to guarantee it will happen again.

Bill Maher, last Friday, on his HBO show:

This is what I call unintentional racism. Because that’s the whole thing with the Bush people — they just can’t imagine. “Why don’t you just pack up your Range Rover, grab a case of Poland Spring water out of the garage, and go to your summer home? What is the problem?”

Once again, comedians provide the most penetrating insights into current events. From The Daily Show on Wednesday:

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan: Some just want to engage in the blame game…

George W. Bush: One of the things that people want us to do here is to play a blame game.

George Bush the Elder: To me, the fascination with the blame game…

FEMA boss Michael Brown: You’re not gonna suck me into that blame game.

Jon Stewart: Just a quick observation: When people do not want to play the blame game, they’re to blame!

The Daily Show on Thursday:

Jon Stewart: The president has vowed to personally lead the investigation into the government’s failed response to Katrina. Isn’t that a job perhaps someone else should be doing?

Samantha Bee: No, no, no, no. Not at all, Jon. To truly find out what went wrong, it’s important for an investigator to have a little distance from the situation. And it’s hard to get any more distant from it than the president was last week.