As I have written elsewhere, the right-wing media are having a Grand Old time pointing out that many of the horror stories from the Katrina aftermath were exaggerations. Drudge had it as his lead story earlier today, complete with fancy-schmancy photo illustration and all.
The only problem is that while the Satan-spawn liberal media were bandwagoning on the anti-Bush blame game, the same gloating right-wingers who are currently affixing halos to their heads were using the exact same exaggerated information to justify their attacks on poor blacks and on the idea of liberalism itself.
Here's a link article I wrote about Rush on a typical rant about those bastard commies down in New Orleans. The right-wing NewsMax had a few gems as well, such as "Rescuers: Katrina Death Toll Boosted by Violence" and "The Real Racists," both of which rely heavily on information that is now under attack—by them.
Then we have the esteemed pre-Pre-Cambrian paleo-con Pat Buchanan in a Sept. 14 editorial entitled "Failure of an Idea — And a People":
At the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center, we saw the failure of 40 years of the Great Society. No sooner had Katrina passed by and the 17th Street levee broke than hundreds of young men who should have taken charge in helping the aged, the sick and the women with babies to safety took to the streets to shoot, loot and rape."So, the question is, if the media got it all wrong and much of their Katrina reporting is now suspect, doesn't that invalidate the right's breathless proclamations as well? Where's their apology? Something tells me we'll be waiting for a long, long time.
Article comments
1 - Luke
The moral of the story is that shit happens.
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Don't move from your demographic, otherwise we can no longer sell you things
2 - Dave Nalle
The fault lays on the media first and everyone who leapt on the bandwagon second.
I truthfully didn't see many people in anything resembling mainstream outlets on the right or left suggesting that race was the cause of sniping or rape or any of the other apparently now fictional excesses.
Things like Buchanan faulting the Great Society are different - they don't have anything to do with the mistakes the media made reporting on New Orleans, and if his point is valid it's still valid, because it pertains to the more general situation of a large neighborhood of poor people living below sea level with little chance to escape or advance themselves. That's an entirely different issue, really.
Dave
3 - ss
But weren't the poor people already living in a large neighborhood below sea level before the Great Society? Would 'rolling back' the Great Society, rather than reforming it, eliminate the large neighborhoods of poor people or the fact that poor people usually get the lowest elevations in cities? An even more important question from your standpoint: would the elimination of the Great Society actually translate to a Great tax cut, or a small pitance while the pols in DC give the money to the people who can do the most to get them re-elected?
4 - Dave Nalle
I didn't say Buchanan was right, but at least as far as Louisiana is concerned, all the spending that's gone on to lift people up through the power of the government's wallet has done very little. Of course in Louisiana my suspicion is that none of that money actually ever got to where it would do anyone any real good - excep the corrupt politicians - so it may not be a fair test.
Dave
5 - Pete Blackwell
I believe what Patty B was saying is, "Look at all the black people raping shooting looting. Isn't our society going to hell?" If, as Rush, Drudge and NewsMax now gloatingly tell us, all that crime was exaggerated, then Dino-Pat's thesis loses some of its oomph. N'est pas?
6 - Pete Blackwell
Just as an aside, the media were reporting what high officials, police chiefs, etc. were saying. That sounds like "doing their job." They were wrong because the people on the ground were wildly disorganized and they were quoting them (usually with caveats, by the way).