Veddy interesting. It had struck me at some point mid-week that we hadn’t really been talking much about the post-hurricane situation in coastal Texas, and for obvious reasons - a global economic meltdown does tend to dominate the headlines.

But apparently one reason we’re not reading more about what happened in and around Galveston is that there’s been a media blackout. Press coverage of the Crystal Beach area of the Bolivar Peninsula in particular has been restricted; in a rather testy exchange, a Houston TV reporter demands an answer from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who tries to pretend it’s not his call, admonishes the reporter for even asking about fatalities:

In other words, something’s going on - that some officials in Texas, at least, don’t want the general public to know about.

Now. There is a presidential campaign going on. There’s the aformentioned economic crisis. These are edgy times, and images of yet another American town destroyed wouldn’t exactly, you know, boost people’s confidence in their country or its leaders.

But it’s indicative of where we’re at as a country that the chief lesson learned from Katrina was the need to stonewall the media in matters, literally, of life and death.