Posted on 09/03/2005 8:25:08 PM PDT by Yosemitest
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The subject here is the media -- well, the far-left fringe and their looking at what's happening in New Orleans as a "holocaust of the black people." Some Democrat websites are now referring to this as a holocaust -- and, of course, you know, holocausts, those are manmade. Holocausts are caused by man. It's almost like saying it's a genocide here, and they're asking, "Why doesn't the mainstream press talk about this?" This piece by Jack Shafer at Slate.com. He wants to know why the media does not have the guts to talk about the fact that race and class are really what's on display here, that all the people hurt are black and they're poor. "I don't recall any reporter exploring the class issue directly by getting a paycheck-to-paycheck victim to explain that he couldn't risk leaving because if he lost his furniture and appliances, his pots and pans, his bedding and clothes, to Katrina or looters, he'd have no way to replace them. No insurance, no stable, large extended family that could lend him cash to get back on his feet, no middle-class job to return to after the storm." Well, I got an e-mail from when I read this the first time a subscriber at Rush 24/7 Kathleen Miller who said, "Evidently the libs are able to get those same people to the polls to vote on Election Day. Apparently it wasn't important enough to evacuate them to save their lives. The hypocrisy is stunning." You know, you cannot ignore who runs this city if you're going to start making these kinds of allegations. If you're going to start demanding this kind of attention, you better be prepared to go all the way with it.
So if you're going to say the press isn't responding or isn't reporting the nature of the survivors and the dead and that they are mostly black and mostly poor because there's an inert racism here and a fear of political correctness or whatever, well, let's explain why that might be. Sixty-seven percent of the population of New Orleans is black and so the odds are that the sufferers and the people harmed by this are going to be black -- and, by the way, all these areas are wiped out. The non-black population was just as devastated, but apparently they were able to get out, and the black population wasn't able to get out. Maybe New Orleans has a half decent mass transit people and some of these people don't need cars.
"But no, Rush, you're glossing over. They can't afford cars."
Well, why is that? Why can't they afford them? What is it about New Orleans that doesn't pay? It's a 67% black population. They have lots of black-run businesses. Why is this they don't pay well down there? You cannot just examine this from the context or through the prism of 1964 United States of America, which is what liberals tend to do. Like I said: If it's race, they see this country as 1964, back to the 1800s. If it's war, they see this country from 1965 to 1973, Vietnam. If they look at the economy, they see America in the 1930s, and they never modernize. Nothing ever changes, and why something never changes is never examined.
I just shared with you Thomas Lifson's piece from the American Thinker pointing out that by all rights New Orleans ought to be the petroleum capital of this country. They were first with the access to oil in the Gulf. They have the Mississippi; they've got the natural port down there but Houston overtook them. How is this possible? Houston had to dredge a ditch from Houston to the Gulf of Mexico in order to get tankers in and out, and yet Houston is a bigger oil city than New Orleans. Why is this? There are reasons. Houston is an entrepreneurial city. Houston is not a welfare state mentality in its government; New Orleans is. This is not racial. This is not a racial comment. This is ideological. Folks, we've been talking about this for 18 years. You know, we have arguments in this country, "What's the 
best way to provide for people?" We on this program believe capitalism and entrepreneurism the best way to provide the greatest amount of prosperity for the greatest number of people. The welfare state will never do that. Socialism to one degree or another has failed everywhere it's been tried. New Orleans has been run by liberal Democrat governments, people, for as long as I can remember, and there's an entitlement mentality there. You are never going to have a thriving city relying on handouts, or on welfare payments, whatever you want to call them. It's just not going to happen. If you're going to raise this issue, Mr. Shafer, you're going to volunteering all the way with it. You can't stop at 1964 and just assume that this is all happening because a bunch of racists somewhere are behind this. Actually that's not what they're saying because when they look at this they see America in 1964 and what they're doing is indicting our society.
The whole purpose of this story for Mr. Shafer and these stories on these lower level websites that hopefully they think will percolate to the mainstream press is to eventually indict the American way of life, to indict the American culture, to indict the American society as inherently unfair and racist. "How can a genuinely good country like we think America is allowed this to happen?" That's the mind-set. It is as though there are some people who want this to happen and who don't care that it does happen when they see it. They don't care that people are suffering if they're black; they don't care if they die if they're black. That's how the left, many of them, view this country, and so the purpose of this is not to really indict Bush. That's secondary. The purpose of this is not to indict any individual. The purpose of this is to call into question the whole concept of American society. "America is a racist country. We're no different now than we were in '64. We're no different now than we were in the antebellum days. We're no different than we were in the days of slavery. John Roberts is going to be on the Supreme Court, he's got confederate sympathies!" You see what I mean. Let me continue with this piece. Let me do this first. "What accounts for the broadcasters' timidity [in pointing out these things]? I saw only a couple of black faces anchoring or co-anchoring but didn't see any black faces reporting from New Orleans." Okay, so it's the reporters that are racist -- or maybe they're afraid. "[I]t's safe to assume that the reluctance to talk about race on the air was a mostly white thing. That would tend to imply that white people don't enjoy discussing the subject. But they do, as long as they get to call another white person racist. My guess is that Caucasian broadcasters refrain from extemporizing about race on the air mostly because they fear having an Al Campanis moment."
Campanis, who went on Nightline, general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers at the time, said that blacks just didn't have the intellectual skills to be in top management. It's the only thing like that he'd ever said. I mean, Campanis led the league in hiring minorities -- Latin-Americans and blacks. He was offering to get into fights with anybody who disrespected Jackie Robinson. He made that one statement on Nightline, and it ruined him, and Koppel even game him a chance to back out of it and it's what he did because that's what he believed, and bam! Everybody is afraid of a Jimmy "The Greek" moment, and some are afraid of a Rush Limbaugh moment. You don't even have to make a racial comment to have all kinds of hell visited upon you, as I myself know. You don't need to make a racial comment whatsoever. In fact, I did nothing different than what Mr. Shafer in a sense is doing here. I questioned the sports media and why they were not critical of somebody I thought was not worthy at the time of all the praise they were handing out. This guy is wondering why the white media today is not pointing out certain things that he sees. "This sort of latent racism..." as we resume the piece by Mr. Shafer.
"This sort of latent racism (or something more potent) may lurk in the hearts of many white people who end up on TV, as it does in the hearts of many who watch. Or, even if they're completely clean of racism's taint, anchors and reporters fear that they'll suffer a career-stopping Campanis moment by blurting something poorly thought out or something that gets misconstrued. Better, most think, to avoid discussing race at all unless someone with impeccable race credentials appears to supervise - and indemnify - everybody from potentially damaging charges of racism. Race remains largely untouchable for TV because broadcasters sense that they can't make an error without destroying careers. That's a true pity. If the subject were a little less taboo, one of last night's anchors could have asked a reporter, 'Can you explain to our viewers, who by now have surely noticed, why 99% of the New Orleans evacuees we're seeing are African-American? I suppose our viewers have noticed, too, that the provocative looting footage we're airing and re-airing seems to depict mostly African-Americans.' If the reporter on the ground couldn't answer the questions, a researcher could have Nexised the New Orleans Times-Picayune five-parter from 2002, 'Washing Away,' which reported that the city's 100,000 residents without private transportation were likely to be stranded by a big storm. In other words, what's happening is what was expected to happen: The poor didn't get out in time."
Okay, Mr. Shafer, who runs the city? The 67% black population has elected a black mayor for years. See, the thing that gets me about this is he sees all these things that I don't see. He's looking to be critical in the area of race. He doesn't see human misery; he sees black misery. There's plenty of human misery. The people that we're not seeing on TV are as miserable in their own way as these people are, and these people continually say that it's others other than them who are racist, but they're the ones who constantly notice first who somebody is or what somebody's skin color is or what their gender is. They claim to be clean and pure as the wind-driven snow in all this, and yet they're the ones that first notice all these differences among us, and then they take what they've noticed and transfer the notice to people that have not made a big deal out of it and call them racists. Or in this case, they're just scared. They don't have the guts to bring it up. Well, race in this circumstance, folks, is a poisonous weapon, and it's why the liberals are now gravitating to it. They're blaming the media for not having the guts to mention race here which is the attempt to get them to open up and take the lead on how this is an unfairly damaging circumstance to people of color. The mayor is black; over half the city is black. That's nobody's fault. It's statistical given that the crime will be committed by the residents, the majority of which are black. That's not arguable. When 100,000 people, so said, remain and they're all black and the looters come from those who remain, how can it be any other way?
I don't get the point. I mean, it's just more liberal hand-wringing from an age-old page of their playbook. What they're doing right now, folks, with this Mr. Shafer piece begging, cajoling the mainstream press to pick up on this, they're arguing among themselves at this point. Even David Brooks, New York Times, the last line in his column today, "Take a close look at the people you see wandering devastated around New Orleans: they are predominantly black and poor. The political disturbances are still to come." Everybody got wiped out in New Orleans, folks. What the hell is this? Everybody got wiped out! Everybody's wiped out, yet they still try to outdo one way or another, milking the anguish, hoping someone notices. It's the cheapest and darkest side of journalism because, as I said, they are attempting to indict our society. What I see down there, contrary to what Mr. Shafer sees, I see people of all races help each other. I see people of all religions trying to help each other. I see all kinds of businesses gathering and trying to help each other. But here's the bottom line. The New York Times and all these liberal elites, they are the least capable of understanding the American character at a time like this, my friends -- and it also demonstrates what little they bring to the table in our society. What good is a story on all of this now? There is human suffering, and there are efforts to alleviate it as quickly as possible. People of color are not being left behind while others are being chosen and placed in front of the line. The rescuers know no difference. They are all colors. They are all sexes. They are all religions.
So we've got armchair quarterbacks who never offer solutions, who only complain and whine, now trying to drive a further wedge between all of us, in an attempt to indict the American society and the American culture. "We are no good. We stink because we are a racist culture." Not all, but most of the organizations on the ground are religious. The others are military. I have seen American flags hanging from trees and from rooftops. This is just obscene for this kind of attention to be drawn to this now. The volunteers, the military, law enforcement, politicians of both parties are not doing everything possible to address this disaster because all these people are racists, is that what we're to believe? All of these suffering black people that you see are being allowed to suffer because all of the people involved in helping them are racists? Is that the suggestion? They were allowed to suffer in the first place because somebody's racist and they don't earn enough money and don't have cars and can't get out, somebody else has to be racist in order for this circumstance to exist? Is the suggestion that millions and millions and millions of dollars are not being poured into this region now because the people there are black? I see all kinds of relief efforts going on. I see the US military there. Is the US military racist as well? You see, my friends, this is the liberal mind-set. I look at this and I see a nation once again as we were after 9/11 rallying to the aid of our fellow citizens and doing it the best we can, given the limitations we face. The armchair critics in the media -- some on our side, too, but mostly on the left -- can't help but revert to see this country from 1800 to 1964, and do their best to indict this whole country as no good and racist, and wonder why the US media isn't on that case.
not to put New Orleans down. I mean, I'm not being critical. I'm just pointing out what is. The libs and the conservatives in this country have a big argument going about what's the best way to provide the most for the most, and we believe it's entrepreneurial capitalism. We believe that that's the simple, best way to more prosperity for more people. Liberals don't like that because there is a disparity. Some don't do as well as others. Some don't have ambition, some don't have the same abilities, some don't have access to whatever they need, education, what have you, and so the welfare state is meant to come over and pick up the slack. Well, the left believes that until everybody's equal, nothing's fair. But the left never tries to elevate, as New Orleans is an example. The left never tries to elevate those at the bottom so that they become more close to the people at the top. What the left has sought to do over all these years is punish those at the top. "We've gotta increase taxes on the rich. We need to have more regulations on success. We need to punish success, be it in the classroom with outcome based education or be it with a tax code or whatever. So what we do is try to take those at the top and bring them down a little bit so they know a little misery so they get closer to what life is like for those who don't do quite as well," and then you come up with what I call the liberal definition of equality: spreading misery equally, and I've never understood this. Why not try to take those people at the bottom and teach them and expose them to their own potential? You know they're not realizing their own potential, sitting around as wards of a welfare state. What kind of compassion is it that actually has people living in those conditions? Why is it that we only want to continue that, and call that compassion, rather than teaching them how to escape it? Conservatives define compassion by counting the number of people no longer in those circumstances. Liberals count compassion by the ever-rising budgets to sustain them in squalor or relative squalor. There's your answer, Mr. Shafer. If you didn't hear it, I hope somebody passes it on to you. Now you don't have to watch Fox, which I know you don't like.
Read the Articles...
(Slate: Lost in the Flood - Jack Shafer)
(NY Times: The Storm After the Storm --David Brooks)
How You Can Help...
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What else needs to be said.
Because their Democrat Mayor and their Democrat Governor left them stranded like drowning rats in a flood basin they knew or should have know was a death trap instead of evacuating them.
Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301680.html
Thanks for the link.
Maybe we can give Louisiana back to the French, that is if they will still take it ! (being sarcastic here, not serious).
Governor Blanco and Senator Landrieu Host the Women's Leadership Conference
Email the Governor or write to
Telephone Numbers: 1-(866) 366-1121
(225) 342-0991 or 342-7015
Facsimile: (225) 342-7099
Amazing clarity ...
Thank you for that information. I think we need only send her the Washington Post article.
And ask her why the President of the United States of America had to urge her to evacuate the City of New Orleans, which she admitted happened when she gave a press conference at 10:30 on Sunday before the storm.
The mayor prefers being a playboy and a glad hander, enjoying the fruits of political position. It is unfair to ask him to perform, especially in a crisis. He reminds me of Bill Clinton. Aren't we fortunate that neither Clinton or Gore were in office for 9/11 and Katrina? Louisiana had Nagin and Blanco, adding Clinton or Gore to that would be cruel and unusual.
Excellent!!!
FOOTNOTES:
F18: given...: Heb. done to him
F19: lead...: or, call thee blessed
Thanks for posting
Thanks Rush Limbaugh!
That's an explosive discussion in the making! However, if you apply it to New Orleans both before AND after Katrina ... it would hard not to find some validity from the hardest of critics.
The Bible always silences the debate.
Oh yes ... when you really apply it ... there is no room for discussion. In our society, everyone is given freedoms to be successful and prosper. Everything is taken for granted and abused in New Orleans - education, crime, sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, laziness, gluttony, etc
All 7 Deadly Sins could be found within minutes of any starting point in the city, huh?
However... I see the words of old in today's events. Time to rest now ...at least for the night, and peace to all, to ponder these things. Special prayers for Chief Judge Rehnquest's family and for our nation.
If it doesn't already have it, this nugget is entitled to its own thread!
"Governor Blanco and Senator Landrieu Host the Women's Leadership Conference"
LOL. Blanco should be banned from ever using the word "leadership" again.
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