CCTV FOLLIES 11.10 BETTER LATE THAN NEVER?

Xi visits the flood-hit zone in and around Beijing three months after waters recede! -Utter neglect is skillfully transformed into a shining success -Personality cult watch -Xi cares about humanity!

Better late than never? Awakening from a coma (induced by excessive purges, secret trials, and a lavish, luxurious life in various villas) Xi Jinping belatedly acknowledges the killer floods of August. The CCP’s criminal neglect and Xi’s abject silence on the catastrophic flooding that saw his government deliberately divert water to rural settlements with deadly consequences. A public relations disaster on a level that makes the infamous President GW Bush “flyover” of Katrina-ravaged New Orleans look like timely humanitarian intervention, Xi has his work cut out for him.

What follows is a master class in propaganda in which culpability, callousness, imperial aloofness and neglect are flipped into a fairy tale about how there is no one in the world who cares more about the floods in China than Xi Jinping, and that he and his hacks in the ruling party deserve credit for their apt and courageous handling of the disaster.

In a staggering display of brute media power and toxic narcissism, …