Fractured Fables

A famished fox who was a press secretary to the President of the United States saw some clusters of ripe black grapes hanging from a trellised vine. The Fox who was a press secretary to the President of the United States resorted to all His tricks to get at them, but wearied himself in vain, for he could not reach them. At last the fox who was a press secretary to the President of the United States turned away, hiding his disappointment and saying:"The Grapes are sour, and not ripe as I thought."
This is the fable that the White House would like us to read as their comment on Scott McClellan's new book. "Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," said current White House press secretary Dana Perino, a former deputy to McClellan. "We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew." Neither Ms. Perino nor Mr. McClellan are particularly vulpine, but the moral of the fable would seem to work for either one, if we continue to stretch this metaphor with the McClellan memoir represented by the grapes.
Here's some of the sour ones: In Pinhead's second term, as news from Iraq grew worse, McClellan says the president was "insulated from the reality of events on the ground and consequently began falling into the trap of believing his own spin." All of this was a "serious strategic blunder" that sent Bush's presidency "terribly off course."
"The Iraq war was not necessary," McClellan concludes.
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005, for instance, the administration went on autopilot "rather than seizing the initiative and getting in front of what was happening on the ground."
It's that "on the ground" thing that Pinhead and his cronies seem to have the hardest time with. As long as they remain in the air, all is well. Just like those grapes, way up high.