Notes From D. R.

Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think, that just before the two-year anniversary of Rush Limbaugh being thrown off ESPN for his wicked-bizarre comments about Donovan McNabb’s adulation in the mainstream media, Limbaugh would say something inarguably accurate about the way the press covers racial issues?

On September 1, Limbaugh (on both his radio show and his website) addressed the media’s focus on the demographics of those who suffered and died as a result of Hurricane Katrina. After mentioning a story on Dailykos.com that suggested that the Bush Administration was slow to respond because the victims were disproportionately African-American, Limbaugh noted that those who actually believe that "Bush doesn’t care about black people"

"…

work off an old playbook. They never modernize. They have a view of America that never changes. The view of America, when it comes to race, is 1960. The view of America economically is the 1930s. The view of America at war is 1969 through ‘73, Vietnam. I mean, that’s how they look at this country. So when race enters into it, whenever there’s pictures of black people suffering on television, the liberal cannot help but conclude, ‘Well, it’s the 1960s, and this is actually probably desired by somebody..’."

Limbaugh further noted that the theme of the Administration’s alleged hard-heartedness towards people of color was picked up by Jack Shafer of Slate.com.:

“…this piece is actually asking the media: Why aren’t you pointing out to everybody that these are black people suffering, that these are black people dying, that these are black people that are going thirsty and black people not being rescued? This is asking the mainstream press. So they’re exerting pressure on the mainstream press to, hey, come on, gang, notice what’s going on here. Now, you might be asking yourself, ‘Wait a minute! The majority of the population is black in New Orleans. Who are they supposed to be? And then we had a natural disaster that went through there. Nobody steered it there. Who’s supposed to be there if they didn’t leave?’ Oh, by the way, they couldn’t. They didn’t have the means. They didn’t have the money. They didn’t have cars. They didn’t have a way to get out. ‘Nobody cared to get them out. Nobody really, really cared. Nobody really cared to try to prevent what we’re seeing because they’re black and nobody cares about them because they’re not full citizens.’ This is the liberal template.  This is how they look at this. This is what they’re seeing when they watch television, and they wonder why the media is not echoing this; they wonder why the media is not saying the same things that they’re thinking. Well, the mayor of New Orleans is black. The last mayor of New Orleans is black. The previous mayor of New Orleans was black. The police chief was black. So? The majority of the population of New Orleans is black. So? If the hurricane or some strong tornado destroyed Grosse Pointe, Michigan, I guarantee you that it would all be white people, but that [didn’t] happen, or hasn’t happened recently. Biloxi? I don’t know what the racial makeup of Biloxi, Mississippi is but the idea that you can look at a disaster like this and not see [just] human beings! You see, Democrats always tell us that they’re not racist, that we are. We’re the racists. We’re the ones who notice race or sex or skin color or gender, religion, whatever. I’m sorry, folks, but I look at this, and I’m overwhelmed by the human misery of it all — and to the extent that I see people who are poor, I see poor people, and then I say, ‘Why is this? This city’s been around forever.’

After discussing the inept political leadership in Louisiana, and the role that such inept leadership played in causing the economic status of those affected by the hurricane, Limbaugh continued:

“Now the left wants to couch all this in racism, because, to them, this just shows the country is no farther beyond the 1800s or 1964 than we’ve ever been. The left doesn’t want to talk about the ideology of this, they want to talk about Bush doesn’t care and Republicans or whoever is racist, and nobody cares about the suffering black people. I see a lot of people care about it! I see people of all sexes, all creeds, all religions. I see people of all skin colors down there running this rescue effort. I see all kinds. I see people being pulled from near death by people of a different skin color. I see the military working. I don’t see any of [what] these liberals see. They see it, and then they charge racism. They see it and they charge racism. They need a mirror when they charge racism so it bounces right bam at them because they’re the ones exhibiting, and some of it is hideous…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.

Again pointing out that horrible political leadership in Louisiana is at fault for the poverty in certain sections of that state (horrible leadership that, it must be acknowledged, goes all the way back to the Huey Long era), Limbaugh concluded:

“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… the thing that gets me about this is [Shafer]  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…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.

When I first heard Limbaugh’s remarks, I was not sure of their accuracy—I believed that the media’s focus on the racial aspect of this tragedy was specifically about indicting Bush, as opposed to indicting American society as a whole. However, when I heard a caller on Saturday’s Pat Whitley Show on WRKO-AM claim that what was going on in New Orleans proves “how much this country hasn’t changed since the ‘60s,” I flashed back to Limbaugh’s remarks, and realized that, in this instance, he wasn’t wrong.

Clearly, there are people—not all of them black—who look at the photos of suffering and see those images as evidence that the country is just as prejudiced as it was four decades ago. The most frustrating thing about such a belief—as the Washington Post’s William Raspberry pointed out in a 1998 article—is that it is manifestly not the case.

Governmental bureaucratic incompetence, not bigotry, is to blame for the woeful slowness of FEMA’s aid effort after Katrina struck. That the federal government botched up the relief effort should, unfortunately, come as no surprise: look at how many things our government routinely botches up, from the Big Dig to the attempt to keep our borders secure. The circumstances may be different (and more tragic), but the incompetence is just the same.

However, the attempt to use this tragedy as proof that the country is still racist is just misguided. Have we now forgotten all of the black prosperity that exists in this country?  Does the black middle class all of a sudden not exist? Does the black upper class all of a sudden not exist? If we’re actually to buy the notion that this tragedy represents that fact that “nothing’s changed” since the ‘60s, then I guess we’ll just have to strike from our collective memories Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, and Sean Combs—because, let’s face it, how could any of those guys have such success in a “racist” society?

The aftermath of Katrina is the logical consequence of screw-ups on the part of the local, state, and federal government. However, those who see in this tragedy evidence that “nothing’s changed” since the ‘60s are simply living in the past.