BREAKING NEWS! PRESIDENT SITS IN PEW, LOOKS SAD!

Lead stories on various news sites as I type this:

CNN: Bush leads 9/11 eve tributes

MSNBC: SOLEMN RITES: Bush lays wreaths at New York's ground zero

New York Times: Bush Mourns 9/11 at Ground Zero as New York Revisits Loss in Ceremonies

Fox News: President Visits Ground Zero: Lays wreaths honoring victims

ABC News: Bushes Lay Wreaths at Trade Center Site

I tried to make this point yesterday when I talked about the overwhelming emphasis on Bush in the photo essays on the "Remembering 9/11" page at whitehouse.gov, but here's that emphasis now being repeated in the media everywhere -- this year, 9/11 isn't about the 3,000 victims, or their families, or New York or D.C. or Shanksville, or America, or Al Qaeda. 9/11 is about Bush.

And we ain't seen nothin' yet -- even more than today, tomorrow, 9/11/06, is going to be all Bush, all the time. (I watched some of the coverage of the memorial service today at Saint Paul's Chapel, switching back and forth from CNN to Fox, and it seemed the camera was glued on Bush. I saw no shots of firefighters and no shots of families. I'm sure tomorrow will be more of the same.)

The recent Bush speeches segued into CBS and NBC interviews that lay the groundwork for this new narrative, that 9/11 is something that happened primarily to Bush, and secondarily to everyone else. Bush has seized an event that he watched from afar and other people participated (and died) in, an event the epicenter of which he wouldn't venture near for three days. Will anyone else ask whether this is appropriate?