Ugly Racism Bubbles UP on Left-Wing Sites

RUSH: This is dicey. It’s like I say: “law and order” in New Orleans is a code word for racism. You don’t talk about law and order because you’ll have people like Jesse Jackson on your case. So you don’t talk about it. The idea that, for example, the gangs running around down there now just came to life because of the disaster is na?ve. I mean, there are gangs in major metro areas all over the country, and they surface whenever, and this is the exact type of circumstance they exploit. I mean, folks, for crying out loud, we have rescue helicopters being fired on these people today at the Superdome. Rescue helicopters being fired on…. I mentioned at the beginning of the program that I’ve been trolling these wacko leftist websites, and I saw one that was particularly disturbing earlier this week, used the N-word in a headline. It was all about… Well, the point of this whole post was that the reason nobody is rescuing them and the reason nobody cares about them and the reason they’re being allowed to die the way they are is because they’re the N-word, and they were not blaming anybody but our culture.
“America is a racist country.” This is this leftist website’s point of view, Daily Kos is what it was; Daily “Chaos,” however the hell you pronounce it. “This is our culture. This is our society. We are a racist society, and this attitude, of course, has been prevalent long since before the Civil Rights Act and the sixties and the actions that led up to it.” Remember, the libs 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.” I read it, and to be fair there are a number of people on this website that were horrified and offended by it and said, “Take it down. You’re going to hurt us by putting this up there,” and an argument began on this website as to whether or not the headline should stay, and very few really were debating the substance of this locoweed’s point. Well, that’s what starts these things, and they percolate out there and they effervesce, just like, “There aren’t enough National Guard troops because Bush sent them all to Iraq.” That started on this website, and now Diane Sawyer is asking Bush about it today. Make no mistake when I tell you that the mainstream press has its tentacles dug deep into the fringe kook of the Democratic Party. It’s true, and that’s where some of this stuff comes from.
It’s where a lot of the mainstream press questions and attitudes and overall world view come from. Cindy Sheehan? No different. So it has now come higher toward the surface, bubbled up a little bit beyond the sewer of the Daily Kos website and has now reached Slate.com. In a piece by a man named Jack Shafer. I’m sorry, I do not know who he is. Oh, Jack Shafer is Slate’s editor-at-large. Um (sigh), I don’t know where to start with this. The title of his piece? Let’s just start I guess at the beginning: “Lost in the Flood — Why no mention of race or class in TV’s Katrina coverage?” And 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 doesn’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 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.” So I run across Thomas Lifson’s piece comparing Houston to New Orleans and why Houston shouldn’t be the capital of the oil business in this country, but it is, and there are reasons for it. They have nothing to do with race. They have everything to do with politics; they have everything to do with world view. If, you as a mayor, or if you, as a city council, run a city based on the welfare and entitlement thinking of government, bammo! You’re going to get poor citizens! If you run a city that believes in entrepreneurialism and growth and so forth, you’re not going to have as much of that, but if your city believes that it’s entitled, if that’s the world view of the leaders of a community — and I don’t care what their race is.
If their world view is that this is a welfare state, “The government needs to protect us. The government needs to feed us. The government needs to transport us.” Well, guess what? “The government needs to build the levees. The government needs to make sure the levees hold.” You’re passing the buck all over the place and accepting all the money that the government is sending in to you, and then something like this happens, and then you start, you know, wringing your hands, “Oh, look how poor the population is.” Well, what do you expect when you have a welfare state mentality as your city government? I mean, I’m not even being critical. I’m just trying to point out something obvious here. I’ve been talking about this for 18 years, folks, socialism versus capitalism, entrepreneurialism and self-reliance versus the entitlement mentality. So much on display here. That’s what nobody’s got the guts to say. 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 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.
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RUSH: All right, look, a lot of you people are on hold out there. It’s going to be a while. I just want to be honest. You’re on hold because I want to talk to you. I’ve got a guy that wants to disagree with me on capping the gas price. I’ve got to talk to that guy, and some other people. Refiners supposedly don’t want to build new refineries. That’s somebody making that point. But it’s going to take me awhile to go through this because you’ve got to tiptoe through this stuff, folks. The racial component, we can no longer deny it. If you haven’t yet seen it or heard it mentioned overtly, it isn’t going to be long, and it will come up in a cable show or a morning show, an interview of an administration official or something. It’s been bubbling all week and it’s now reached, you know, it’ll level higher than the Democrat sewer, and it won’t be long before it then graduates to the mainstream press. This guy, Jack Shafer, the editor at large, Slate.com, “Lost in the Flood — Why no mention of race or class in TV’s Katrina coverage?” and again, this is a piece directed at the media. Why doesn’t the media tell us what we’re all seeing? Well, we don’t we all see what the left sees is the reason. He says:

“I can’t say I saw everything that the TV newscasters pumped out about Katrina, but I viewed enough repeated segments to say with 90% confidence that broadcasters covering the New Orleans end of the disaster demurred from mentioning two topics that must have occurred to every sentient viewer: race and class. Nearly every rescued person, temporary resident of the Superdome, looter, or loiterer on the high ground of the freeway I saw on TV was African-American. And from the look of it, they weren’t wealthy residents of the Garden District. This storm appears to have hurt blacks more directly than whites, but the broadcasters scarcely mentioned that fact.” Uh (sigh), I’m sorry. I do not understand this. Help me out, Mr. Snerdley. When he says, “This storm appears to have hurt blacks more directly than whites but the broadcasters scarcely mention…” what is the point? They lived there. They weren’t transported and placed in front of this storm. It has to be this 1960s mentality, the lib mantra that hurricanes or disasters hurt blacks and the poor and women the hardest. The white people leave. The white people are able to get out of there, they’re the only ones with cars. Well, why is this? Somebody is not allowing black people to buy cars? Somebody is not allowing black people to earn enough money to buy cars?
He says, “Now, don’t get me wrong. Just because 67% of New Orleans residents are black, I don’t expect CNN to rename the storm ‘Hurricane’ Carter in honor of the black boxer. Just because Katrina’s next stop after destroying coastal Mississippi was counties that are 25% to 86% African-American, and 27.9% of New Orleans residents are below the poverty line, I don’t expect the Rev. Jesse Jackson to call the news channels to give a comment. But in the their frenzy to beat freshness into the endless loops of disaster footage that have been running all day, broadcasters might have mentioned that nearly all the visible people left behind in New Orleans are of the black persuasion, and mostly poor.” I have seen white people in line at the Superdome! I have seen white people that have not been able to get out of that town. “To be sure, some reporters sidled up to the race and class issue. I heard them ask the storm’s New Orleans victims why they hadn’t left town… Many said they were broke?’I live from paycheck to paycheck,’ explained one woman. Others said they didn’t own a car with which to escape and that they hadn’t understood the importance of evacuation. But 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.”
So this ought to be, according to this man, the focus of the coverage that we’re getting out of there.
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