Goldstein v. Goldberg

Interesting essay, knocking Goldberg for 1) joining the MSM in rumormongering and 2) blaming "the blogosphere" for joining in said rumormongering, when, in point of fact, it was largely the Corner itself going bananas over these reports.

(PS, I'm quite sure I have a post reporting these rumors, too, but only one or two. I didn not, as Golstein charges of the Cornerites, "lose my shit.")

I think Goldberg was compromised on this early, because he made some sort of snarky remark about the Superdome being the Thunderdome, and was taken to task by the "How dare you!" crowd. Thereafter, he (and some of the other Cornerites, I guess) had to prove his/their empathy by talking about how terribly terribly horribly terrible all of this was. He wasn't really in a position to start debunking.

The other day I accused the media of racism in being so credulous about reports of black folks becoming Reavers from Firefly in just a few days of chaos. I was only half-serious; I was mostly just using their tactics against them.

But I don't think they regurgitated these reports out of racism, or at least not out of conscious racism. More like "helpful liberal racism," the bestest racism in the world. By claiming that New Orleans was, uhhh, the new Bartertown (it's now safe to use Mad Max analogies), reporters thought they were helping po' blacks. By exaggerating the problem, they thought they were doing the Lord's Work in setting the table for a Big Time Governmnet Solution. The more tragedy, mayhem, and baby-rapin' they reported, the bigger the government payout in the following months, and the sooner the end to black poverty, because, you know, nothing cures black poverty faster than Big Government Checks.

Hey. Give the Great Society some time. It hasn't even been forty years.

The reporters and MSM as a whole seem to have gotten their wish-- there will be money poured into New Orleans, much of it in the form of non-competive contracts, which I'm sure will pose no problems in squeaky-clean politically-hyegenic Louisiana.

There's a backlash brewing against that, but the forces in favor of just spending willy-nilly are too strong. I trust that George W. Bush will continue to demonstrate his compassion by spending our money like a drunken sailor.

posted by Ace at 01:10 PM

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