Put another way: if the ten most inappropriate attempts at humor that you’ve ever made in a private conversation ended up on the Internet, how would you fare in the public’s perception?

McCain’s campaign manager, on the other hand, wasn’t attempting to make a bad joke. He was deliberately using the disaster for partisan gain with a nonsense holier-than-thou attack on Obama’s actions vis a vis Gustav, as contrasted with McCain’s “country first” approach. Really pathetic and transparent and just gross. Ugh.

The RNC is doing the right thing, as you say, Tom, but they need to do it without preening about it, patting themselves on the back, and arguing that it makes them better than the other guys. As for the “narcissistic event” concept… um… if it weren’t for Gustav, the RNC would be all about McCain, just like the DNC was all about Obama. That’s what conventions are. There wasn’t a hurricane during the DNC, so you can hardly fault them for doing what’s, y’know, completely normal.