Real Or Onion?

Welcome to today's "Real Or Onion" challenge where you, the Shakers, guess whether or not the following clip is real or snagged from The Onion (no peeking until you guess):

Michael D. Brown, Former FEMA Director and Current Director of Cotton Companies, one of the leading disaster preparedness and restoration organizations in the nation, is available for comment regarding the wild fires that are devastating Southern California.

Answer below the fold.

Real.

Currently, the brush fires are affecting hundreds of local businesses and have forced more than 500,000 people out of their homes. Of these 500,000 people, an estimated 10,000 of them have taken shelter at the local NFL stadium, Qualcomm, vaguely reminiscent of circumstances of Hurricane Katrina evacuees two years ago.

"The agency has learned some hard lessons regarding the handling of mass evacuations especially in regard to the bureaucratic red tape that is involved in such a process," said Mr. Brown. "This is a tragic time for many of the people of California, and Cotton Companies is working to ensure that normalcy is restored and that businesses and organizations are back up and running as soon as possible."

Cotton has already deployed a team to San Diego to prepare recovery efforts and has a Community Assessment Team in full force.

Mr. Brown can speak to the turmoil being caused by the California wild fires as well as to some of the new processes in disaster relief efforts that will help to restore California communities. He can offer advice to residents and businesses on proper relief and recovery efforts and provide suggestions for future disaster preparedness.

This PR move is simply staggering.

The Lord of Arabian Horses actually wants to put himself out there as some kind of subject matter expert to be consulted about the current wildfires after his heckuvafumblenutz job during Katrina. Speaking of which, I'm even more gobsmacked that the PR firm's rocket scientists decided to include a reference to Brown's unforgettable moment of failure while pimping him out for an interview. I guess if it covers how to shit repeatedly in one's pants during a national disaster, then let's cue the engineer and go on the air.

Tell ya what, Mike. Get Cotton to finish the job in New Orleans and then maybe we'll consider a podcast with you... to talk about horse grooming.