August 22, 2016

Obama’s Media Protectors

Louisiana and Milwaukee provide a stark contrast in the narrative.

“It is reported that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive. Four days after the storm, thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying like dogs. No one has come to help them.” —Randall Robinson, “reporting” on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 2005.

Robinson, who was forced to concede his assertion was based on “unsubstantiated” claims, was one of many Leftmedia hacks more than willing to shape the narrative that George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans was the epitome of presidential indifference engendered by racism. “George Bush doesn’t care about black people!” stated rapper Kanye West. Congressman Charles Rangel insisted Bush’s response “shattered the myth of white supremacy once and for all,” while Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) blamed the supposedly intentional incompetence on black voter suppression in the 2000 and 2004 elections.

And a certain former senator from Illinois spoke of the “unconscionable ineptitude” of the government’s response.

Moreover, reinforcing the narrative continues. Last year, Vanity Fair columnist Vincent Laforet was still at it. “In the gloomy hours and days after Katrina and the subsequent deluge, the Gulf South region — and the United States as a whole — needed both decisiveness and compassion,” he wrote. “The president had an obligation to call in the 82nd Airborne Division immediately. And he had ample precedent to take on his role as mourner-in-chief. Instead, Bush acted as though he were disinterested in the natural disaster.”

Apparently the media response to some natural disasters is “more equal” than others. Louisiana has once again endured a powerful storm in which at least 13 people have drowned, 11,000 people are in shelters, 30,000 have been rescued and 52,000 homes have been damaged. And yes, Randall, caskets from at least five cemeteries have been seen floating in the floodwaters.

So where is our current mourner-in-chief? “Obama has still not returned from his vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, and the White House said Thursday Obama would spend the day golfing. While a White House spokeswoman said the president also spoke with FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate to get an update after Fugate’s visit to the area, there are currently no confirmed plans for Obama to end his vacation early,” Fox News reported Friday.

No doubt Fugate is doing precisely the same “heckuva job” for which Bush and his FEMA director Michael D. Brown were thoroughly excoriated.

But it’s not as if Obama has been completely dedicated to his vacation, despite playing his eighth round of golf in 12 days at tony places like the Vineyard Golf Club, the nation’s first “organic” golf course that commands an initiation fee of $350,000. As an editorial in the Advocate noted, “[I]f the president can interrupt his vacation for a swanky fundraiser for fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, as he did on Monday, then surely he can make time to show up for a catastrophe that’s displaced thousands.”

No, he can’t. “The president can’t be everywhere,” rationalized Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson last Friday. When pressed why Obama couldn’t give up golfing while people were dying, Johnson doubled down, insisting the president is “very much on top of the situation.”

“The biggest mistake of all was one of optics,” Laforet insisted. “Bush chose to fly over New Orleans in Air Force One instead of doing an on-the-ground inspection — a clear sign of aloofness, indeed, of fear. The photo-op of the man in charge staring out the window of his plane was disastrous.”

Obama choosing to golf? “So far, there have been no mainstream media outlets criticizing Obama’s apparent lack of response, nor have there been any celebrities claiming Obama doesn’t care about the people on the ground,” Fox News reported.

And there won’t be. Nor will the actual chain of events that occurred during Katrina ever be made widely available to a public fed a Leftmedia-revised history that lays the majority of blame for the Katrina disaster on a Republican administration, while conspicuously ignoring the culpability of Democrat Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Democrat Mayor Ray Nagin. Neither called for a mandatory evacuation of the city, even after National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield pleaded with them to do so — after an NOAA buoy 240 miles to the south had recorded 68 foot waves before it was destroyed.

Louisiana is not the only disaster for which the president refuses to cancel a tee time. While Milwaukee endured two days of racist rioting — as in black thugs attacking innocent white people in cars and on the street — the First Golfer was also playing one of the more than 300 rounds of golf he has played since becoming president, after which he attended a late night social event. Forget showing up. He didn’t even have anything to say about the 14 people arrested, the six businesses lit on fire, the torched squad cars or the seven deputies who were wounded by rock-throwing “protesters.”

And once again, with CNN leading the way, the media were up to the task of revising the story. Following the shooting of a gun-toting Sylville Smith by a black police officer wearing a camera that corroborated the officer’s version of the event — and simultaneously eviscerated the racist narrative that engendered the rioting — CNN utterly mischaracterized a message by Smith’s sister, Sherelle Smith. “Burnin down s— ain’t going to help nothin! Y'all burnin’ down s— we need in our community,” Smith raged. “Take that s— to the suburbs. Burn that s— down! We need our s—! We need our weaves. I don’t wear it. But we need it. Don’t bring the violence here and the ignorance here.”

What CNN initially showed its audience? “Don’t bring the violence here and the ignorance here.” And on both its website and its Monday CNN Newsroom broadcast, the network framed Smith’s statement as “calling for peace.”

When they were outed, it got worse. “An earlier version of this story mischaracterized what the victim’s sister was trying to convey,” the network explained. “She was calling for peace in her community, urging the protesters to go elsewhere.” That is, to riot and loot white neighborhoods in the suburbs.

Mischaracterization? Editing video, and making choices about what to disseminate — and what not to disseminate — does not happen by itself. And the efforts by media source WJLA to even suggest the possibility that media “ethics experts” theorize the editing “might have been done due to time limitations or it could have been entirely unintentional” is as believable as Washington Post columnist/Obama apologist Chris Cillizza laughably insisting Obama won’t visit Louisiana because he detests “theatrical politics.”

Like Greek columns at a campaign event, Chris? Obama will visit Louisiana on Tuesday — after his vacation.

Unlike Obama, or Clinton — who was also in Martha’s Vineyard fundraising this past weekend — Donald Trump showed up in Louisiana Friday to console the flood victims when it mattered. And while he remains a flawed presidential candidate, people might consider that a Clinton victory would not only keep the despicable ruling class status quo in Washington, DC intact, it would further embolden a Leftmedia that, as CNN’s Chris Cuomo admitted, “couldn’t help her any more than we have.”

Taking down both could be as good a reason to vote for Trump as any other.

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