Posted on Thursday 3 November 2005
The emails of ex-FEMA director, Michael Brown (a.k.a., “Brownie”) sent during Hurricane Katrina have been released. Guess we can all gain a little insight on how to do a “heck of a job”:
“My eyes must certainly be deceiving me. You look fabulous _ and I’m not talking the makeup,” writes Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of public affairs to Brown on 7:10 a.m. local time on Aug. 29.
“I got it at Nordstroms,” Brown writes back. “Are you proud of me? Can I quit now? Can I go home?” An hour later, Brown adds: “If you’ll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you’ll really vomit. I am a fashion god.”
Ironically, his job performance did make a lot of people want to vomit.
Tags: brownie, fema, heck-of-a-job, hurricane-katrina, michael-brown
Another reason not to get a government job. I send silly emails back and forth with people all the time. I don’t want them becoming public.
This is actually a minor reason why I don’t use the university email. As a TA, I’m an employee of the state and a FOIA request could be used to gain access to my “work” email account.
Of course, if there was an emergency within your direct job duties, you probably wouldn’t be writing about your attire.
Is it really possible that you could get access to, say, any CS professor’s UIUC mail via FOIA? If so, it seems like some students with an ax to grind would have done so and the news would have made Slashdot.
My information is all hearsay from Jake, who used to work for the (UIUC) President’s office – where he says this was done to somebody (a VP? I don’t remember for sure).