Earlier today, a Chron blogger/journalist managed to please quite a few members of the partisan lefty blogosophere with a post that was notable not because of the information it contained, but for all the information it left out.
Here are the money grafs from Purva Patel’s dome blog:
U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s visit to Reliant Park this morning offered him a glimpse of what it’s like to be living in shelter.
While on the tour with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.
The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, “Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?”
They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.
With a group of reporters and press officers in tow, DeLay then moved on, chatting with others, including a local IRS representative. He then visited with job recruiters set up in Reliant Park.
A source I spoke to tells me a little more about the event. Apparently, the cabinet secretaries were a little stiff, for lack of a better term, effectively telling the children that Washington was going to help them. The children didn’t react all that well; why would anyone expect them to (go reread, and you’ll see we’re talking about John Snow)? The source I spoke to tells me that the House Majority Leader then started joking with the kids, interacting with them, with arm around them, trying to loosen them up. And the source I spoke to tells me it worked — that he put the children more at ease than they were.
I wasn’t there. I can’t tell you firsthand that’s what happened. But I trust my source. And if that’s the way it happened, Purva Patel’s account omitted important details of the interaction.
Furthermore, Purva Patel’s post omitted other important detail. DeLay, for example, works extensively with foster children. People who know him say he’s really good around all children. So it’s an important matter whether he put the children more at ease than the cabinet secretaries, and how he interacted with the children.
But nobody is going to know any of that from reading Purva Patel’s post.
Apparently, there were members of the press trailing the contingent, and that most likely means cameras were around. Perhaps some photos or even video footage can lend some context to DeLay’s remarks, since Patel chose not to give them any context.
As context goes, Lone Star Times contacted Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, who was a member of the contingent that included DeLay. Eckels said:
“I don’t remember hearing that exchange, but it wouldn’t surprise me, and I don’t see what the big deal would be if he had said it.”
“All of us are down here trying to encourage these kids and get them to focus on the future as much as possible. They’ve been through a severely traumatic event, and all of us are trying to encourage them by talking about their new schools, the new friends they will make.”
“Many of us have tried to help them think about sleeping on a cot for a little while by making reference to
