Friday, September 2nd 2005
I Hate this Meme
UPDATE: Kanye West, “smartest man in pop music,” has perpetuated this BS on national television. Way to make a fool of yourself, at a major charity event no less. You guys need to check out the video, via Michelle Malkin. Really, I cracked up at the end.
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Have you heard about the controversy where black people have been labeled as “looters” while whites are merely “finders”? You probably have, since it’s been on just about every blog out there. We even had a nice discussion about it on CalStuff. I like how this whole thing spread all over the place without anyone actually stopping to think before crying racism. The AP and other organizations have responded:
“We’ve explained that this was two separate news organizations, two separate photographers and two separate occasions,” said Joanna Stevens, spokeswoman for Yahoo Inc. “Once people understand that, they’re no longer angry with us.”
I said pretty much the same thing, but this spokeswoman is only kidding herself. There will always be people who want to be angry:
youve unwittingly hit on the exact reason that people like you dont understand racism. you see it as an individual expression of opinion. you evaluate it as something that is perpetrated and not experienced. to you, it would have to exist in differential treatment of blacks and whites by individuals as opposed to society as a whole…
and its super interesting to me how so many of you fuckers squirm and wriggle in trying to defend these captions… none of you wrote em, or know who did, yet for some reason, it seems you see my point about the captions as somehow being a condemnation of you. thats cool, cuz it was, but it also means that at some level, the light is seeping through the cracks in your little prison cell of a mind…
Even after the facts have been presented, some people still defy logic and insist that anything and everything is racist. Now that’s “super interesting.”
Oh, by the way: Allyson Klein, of San Francisco, has accomplished what all letter writers dream of doing. She had the same letter published in both the Chronicle and the Daily Planet! Letter writers everywhere sing your praises.
Of all the sad news that has resulted from Hurricane Katrina, the media’s characterization of white people as ”finding food” while black people are ”looting” is one of the most disappointing reminders of the racism that pervades our country.
Don’t worry about the people dying, we gotta deal with the “racism”!
your asshole commenting system..
as for NO: lived there for over a year in the nineties. never seen a more dangerous city — and i’ve lived all over the place — and am not in the least surprised by the violence. my only surprise is that looters are breaking into gun shops — i thought everyone already had one.
the place is a shithole. perhaps the hurricane, by displacing the poorest and most degraded parts of the population, will have proven to have gone some way towards correcting this.
Comment by g — 9/2/2005 @ 4:13 pm
g: what’s wrong with the commenting system? If there’s something not working right, I’d like to know so I could fix it. Thanks
Comment by patr — 9/2/2005 @ 4:26 pm
hey everyone, I updated the abolish the asuc blog so everyone can comment
http://abolishtheasuc.blogspot.com
Comment by DTI — 9/2/2005 @ 5:08 pm
the commenting system: it requires an email address. we don’t like that.
Comment by g — 9/2/2005 @ 5:22 pm
yeah ok, you could make one up you know? Anyway, I removed the requirement. I was under the impression that it stopped spam bots, so we’ll see what happens.
Comment by patr — 9/2/2005 @ 5:34 pm
i did make one up. i still don’t like it.
Comment by g — 9/2/2005 @ 5:49 pm
From Drudge:
When will it end…
Comment by patr — 9/2/2005 @ 6:19 pm
I loved that double-take from Mike Meyers.
Comment by Beetle — 9/2/2005 @ 8:17 pm
When The Shiite Hits The Fan
Forget 9-11, let’s talk about Katrina. If there was ever anything to provide a dry run for Al Quaida, this is it, and it has to have the terrorists overjoyed. It has shown the whole world that our great governmental organizations are so inept, bureaucratic and ineffectual that they can’t even get out of their own way, much less accomplish anything meaningful in the way of providing health and safety functions. So if the bad guys can pull off any type of medium to large scale disaster, such as a dirty bomb or biological attack, in just half a dozen cities (as is rumored to be planned), there will be such a breakdown in society that it would do major, irreparable damage to the nation, and it could likely destroy major areas of the country for years to come.
A great deal or the blame can be laid where it rightfully belongs, Washington DC, and not just Bush or Clinton. The blame can be equally laid on every administration since Nixon. The federal government, in its never-ending quest to “help” us, has usurped the authority which has always rightfully rested with the state and local governments. If you are old enough to remember (or can read about it in “uncorrected” history books) the time period from World War II through the late 60’s, you remember the legacy of Civil Defense, a greatly efficient, largely civilian/volunteer outfit that helped defend our shores, rescue us from disaster and provide relief when it struck. But Civil Defense has been all but eliminated and replaced by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, one of the biggest oxymorons of our time. Its inability to respond to any type of major emergency, much less “manage” it, is legendary. During the aftermath of the Katrina flooding, the FEMA director stated he had no idea how many refugees were in the Superdome or Convention Center FOUR DAYS after the hurricane, much less having provided the first lick of relief. Mix in the added bureaucracy of “Homeland Security” to further gum up the works, and you have the perfect recipe for disaster and chaos, now field tested and proven in the Crescent City.
Because of the rise of these overbearing organizations, the local officials no longer have anything much more than ceremonial authority. I heard the mayor of New Orleans decrying his inability to issue any type of meaningful orders to facilitate providing relief and rescue to his citizens. He did not have the authority to declare martial law, commandeer any busses or cruise ships to transport refugees to safe havens, order the deputization of civilians to help stop the widespread looting, or anything else that would have made one whit of difference, as could have been done (and was in the past) under the authority of Civil Defense. However this is not at all likely to change, as Washington NEVER gives up confiscated power without a fight, as we learned about 135 years ago.
So lets take New Orleans, multiply it by 4 or 5 times, and the vision is absolutely frightening, and that is exactly what the terrorists are counting on and now likely preparing for. Our citizens are very tough, self-reliant, adaptable and innovative… concepts that are anathema to our federal masters, which is why they do so much to suppress this independent spirit. In their grand vision, they are the only ones who can protect us from ourselves, and do so with every politically correct method at their disposal. Terrorists, who fit a definable profile, can’t be singled out because that would be “racial profiling”, but Ray Charles can be subjected to a body search… for our protection, you understand. But don’t worry, they will see to it we die a very politically correct death, in a manner guaranteed not to offend anyone.
The citizens of the United States are not the enemy, even though we are routinely treated that way. Civil Defense relied on citizen volunteers to keep our homeland secure for many decades, with great success. Replace FEMA and Homeland Security with Civil Defense, spend the billions at the directions of the local officials, who know best what is needed and where (and give them back their authority), and we will see a vastly different outcome the next time a disaster of this proportion happens. I have seen it work before, and it can again.
Until then… your government is here to protect you… be afraid, be very afraid.
Copyright at Common Law, may be reprinted, but only in its entirity and with attribution
Mike Vanhooser (former member of Civil Defense)
Dallas, Texas 75374
novaelec@sbcglobal.net
Comment by Mike Vanhooser — 9/2/2005 @ 9:26 pm
Mr. Vanhooser,
Excellent post. Everything that you have said makes perfect sense.
As a country we must re-examine our way of coping with issues on the home front and I agree that it is not the Federal Governments place to protect us in every sense of the word.
We must get back to the place where everyone took personal responsibility.
Thanks again for the excellent post.
Kathy
Comment by Kathy — 9/3/2005 @ 8:49 am
Wrong place to ask this, but can you guys stop being partisan for five freaking minutes?
People ARE dying. And they’re mostly black. Anyone who identifies with these people (especially blacks outside NO) has the perfect right to ask; What the Hell? The disgusting superdome situtation shows a lot more then just baised captions.
I’m all for state’s rights and local control, but if there’s ever a case for federal intervention, this is it. When the Big One hits, will Berkeley be able to handle $25 billion in damages w/out help from the federal government?
I respect your views. But there’s federalist ideology, and then there’s just being an asshole.
Comment by Steve — 9/3/2005 @ 12:27 pm
looks like I have me some company these days
Comment by HB — 9/3/2005 @ 3:20 pm
agreed that the administration totally blew the relief effort. bad luck for bush that he happened to be on yet another one of his obnoxious “vacations” when it all happened…
but the race angle is really absurd. of course most of the victims are black — new orleans is an overwhelmingly black city and the city’s ghetto is entirely so (with the exception of some mexicans and vietnamese). jesse helms’ might also have pointed out that most of the perpetrators of violence are also black, which at would lease balance the rhetoric somewhat.
but people are stupid, and they will report what Jackson says because he says it, and he will thereby attempt to pave his political comeback.
Comment by g — 9/3/2005 @ 4:56 pm
of course i didn’t mean “jesse helms”…
Comment by g — 9/3/2005 @ 5:07 pm
SHUT. YOUR. PIE. HOLE. A. BIT. MOORE, MICHAEL.
Vacation is Over… an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush I’m tired of this nonsense. Category 5 hurricanes have been happening for eons. As everyone has heard up to this point, the dikes can only withstand…
Trackback by The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns — 9/4/2005 @ 2:32 am
So far there have been at least three utter failures that you can actually blame individuals for.
1. The mayor had to be persuaded by the president to order a mandatory evacuation of the city.
2. The governor did not send in the national gaurd immediately. Actually, the governor should have had the national gaurd ready to go before the hurricane hit.
3. Some individuals prevented military forces from providing aid and assistance early on.
What I mean by indivudals is that for instance most of the New Orleans police went AWOL, whom exactly do you blame?
The head of the police, the individual police officers who left, the city government, or some combination of them?
Comment by Michael C. Mikulis — 9/6/2005 @ 10:15 am
[…] As for issues surrounding the hurricane, Beetle Beat wonders about “the lack of a giant vigil thingie for Katrina’s victims” and some of our readers discussed the possible racism in the press coverage of the Hurricane, as did Cal Patroit Blog. […]
Pingback by CalStuff: News. Observations. — 9/6/2005 @ 11:54 pm
Kanye West >>>>>>> your pathetic existence.
Comment by mandev gill — 9/7/2005 @ 12:44 am
Stop spreading the horseshit about the mayor interfering with evacuation. At least Blanco and Nagin were on the frickin’ job. Bush wouldn’t even cut short his vacation, while Michael Brown had less knowledge of flood conditions than some coffee house nerd checking his wi-fi Google News.
Bush apologists are moral midgets.
Comment by jonp — 9/10/2005 @ 7:06 pm
KANYE WEST COMMENTS:
WHY FUCK IS THIS DUMB-ASS MONKEY ON TV ANYWAY. HE CAN’T EVEN MAKE A COMPLETE COHERENT SENTENCE.
THIS IS AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE AT IT’S FINEST. A VAST WASTELAND, DEVOID OF ANY SEMBLANCE OF INTELLIGENCE. WHERE THESE NIGGER CRETINS ARE GIVEN VALIDITY BY THE RUBBISH THEY PRODUCE AND MORONS WHO BUY IT…
THIS SHIT FOR BRAINS FUCKING MONKEY IS THE SPOKESPERSON FOR A GENERATION. MY GOD, HOW FRIGHTFUL IS AMERICA’S FUTURE.
WAKE UP AND VOTE FESTLER….
Comment by DAN FESTLER MN — 9/29/2005 @ 11:41 pm