As a formerly ink-stained wretch who has endured his fair share of terminally boring governmental press conferences, I have often wondered what would happen if a government agency gave a press conference and no one showed.

Now I know: They fake it.

Which is what the Federal Emergency Management Agency did last week when it wanted to get out the agency’s version of its role in lending assistance to victims of California’s disastrous wildfires.

According to an Associated Press news story, FEMA – much maligned for its sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina more than two years ago, and still gun-shy from the resulting toxic fallout – had given the media only 15 minutes’ notice of a press conference concerning aid to stricken California.

Because that was insufficient time for Washington-based reporters to drop everything and make it to the briefing, an 800 number was made available to them. FEMA management then rounded up a gaggle of agency loyalists to pose as the absent reporters, handed them notepads, pencils and a list of suggested questions to ask, and the bogus “news conference” was good to go.

The resulting questions were predictably soft and gratuitous, as were the answers such as FEMA’s deputy director disclosing that his agency was extremely happy with its outstanding response to the California disaster, thank you very much for asking.

Not surprisingly, legitimate news reporters squealed like stuck pigs, their lamentations being heard all the way to the White House, which quickly disassociated itself from the unsuccessful caper.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said it was inappropriate that the questions were posed by agency staffers instead of reporters. FEMA was responsible for a gross error in judgment, she said, adding that the White House had not known of the con job beforehand, and certainly did not condone it.

Reaction on Internet sites was swift. One wag wrote that he knew something was fishy when the questions asked at the phony news conference were more intelligent than the usual bill of fare at a legitimate news conference. The first clue, he said, was that no one asked the FEMA briefer, “How do you feel about the fires destroying an area the size of Manhattan?” It was a splendid dig at those insipid touchy-feely reporter questions that always seem to find their way into press conferences these days when disaster is upon the land.

Predictably, President Bush-bashers had a field day. No one should be surprised that a counterfeit press conference would be considered a swell idea by the ruling junta in Washington, they sniffed in indignation.

This, after all, is the administration that had given White House access to a fake news reporter to ask a notoriously softball question at a presidential news conference a couple of years ago, they pointed out. And who can forget the Department of Education’s role in planting feel-good news stories about the controversial “No Child Left Behind” boondoggle a while back? The FEMA deception was hardly an isolated incident, the naysayers insisted.

And they may have a point. But let the record also show that such flimflammery is not confined to a particular political party or administration.

Those allegedly unscripted “town hall meetings” in which either the question, the questioner, or both, is often a plant are not the exclusive province of any one party. Nor are the various dodges used to get around campaign finance laws. Or many supposedly spontaneous grass-roots letter-writing campaigns on behalf of some politician’s pet cause. Certainly neither major party has a corner on the negative advertising scourge that dominates the airwaves when political campaigns approach crunch time. The list goes on.

So no one should be too terribly surprised by FEMA’s self-serving fakery. Not in an age when governments routinely resort to subterfuge and snookery to hornswoggle the peasants, aided and abetted by a national news media that routinely sanctions the use of anonymous sources to float trial balloons for favored sources.

When I speculated that FEMA’s bogus press conference ploy might one day be topped by some outfit staging a bogus disaster, the cynic standing next to me suggested that that production is already in the works.

It’s called global warming, she said, slapping a high-five on me.

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may contact him via e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.