g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

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Little Green Footballs
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Tal G in Jerusalem
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Friday, September 16, 2005
17:35 - "Tell us what we want to hear" doesn't have to mean "lie"
http://realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-9_15_05_LD.html

(top) link
If this sort of thing were on CNN, perhaps I might watch it more often:

With body recovery teams in New Orleans finding far fewer than the expected 10,000 to 25,000 dead, despite the flooding of 80 percent of the city, it is time to ask: What went right?

Largely invisible to the media's radar, a broad-based rescue effort by federal, state and local first responders pulled 25,000 to 50,000 people from harm's way in floodwaters in the city. Ironically, FEMA's role, for good or ill, was essentially non-existent, as was the Governor's and the Mayor's. An ad-hoc distributed network responded on its own. Big Government didn't work. Odds and ends of little government did.

. . .

Urban also notes one explanation why the rescue operation flew below the radar of the media: Individual federal and state units were not coordinating their efforts overall. There was no central clearing house for information on rescue efforts. What looked like a hurricane relief breakdown was in fact a press release breakdown.

Via Power Line, who also links this from Victor Davis Hanson:

Too many of the hysterical pronouncements of ill-informed officials were reported as gospel truth — and then forgotten — in 24-hour bursts. So "25,000 body bags!" and "10,000 dead" beneath the muck of a submerged city were quietly superseded by the matter-of-fact news reports that the airport would open shortly.

Now we are also told that Mardi Gras may be back on schedule. How could such radical improvement happen at ground zero in a city of corpses that supposedly would not recover for decades?

The MSM seems to have internalized some kind of admonishment, gnawing at them like a brain mite, that reporting good news is tantamount to propaganda—that if they were to focus on the positive aspects of a given news story and not the negative, even to just give the positive more prominence than the negative rather than to actually obscure or omit troubling details, means you're filling the shoes of Baghdad Bob. They feel that their role isn't to reassure people, but to remind them of the bleakness of reality. The idea presumably being that reassuring people means lulling them into a false sense of security, convincing themselves that things are going okay, and that change—that big shining concept in the sky, that cornerstone of platitudes from Sesame Street to Market Street—isn't necessary. And that wouldn't do. Change is good, we're taught to repeat until we're incapable of sympathizing with any status quo except the ones that say change is good.

In trying to keep myself focused on the apolitical parts of Katrina, I find myself wondering: would I be doing the same thing if I detested the people in charge? Wouldn't I be looking for an excuse to blame a President I disliked, even if the means by which to pin the aftermath of a horrific natural disaster upon him were ghostly at best? Would I be cheering the MSM's ghoulish coverage, CNN's claiming the right to film bloated bodies, Cindy Sheehan's indirect coining of the term "Occupied New Orleans"? I like to think I wouldn't, but I really can't know that. How can I be sure I would have the fortitude to resist the temptation to make such cheap feel-good allegations as so many are making against Bush and FEMA, if the shoe were on the other foot? I can't. We only get one shot at each such situation, and we never get to replay it or flip ahead in the Choose Your Own Adventure of reality to see which page has the big THE END at the bottom. We can't know how well we'd do in a simulated universe where we could flip certain variables and see what turns out different. Each of our actions and reactions is a once-in-a-lifetime thing; we get no do-overs.

So I suppose I can't criticize the blame-mongers too heavily, because I don't know that I'd be any better if I were in their mental shoes. Still, I know what I would probably see as the more principled position, even if I didn't adhere to it myself: the desire to see positive facts as well as negative ones, even to put the positive ones above the fold and to thrust discouraging details down into the noise. This is, after all, a disaster that the whole country feels, whether through $3.29/gallon gasoline or the knowledge that we'll have to wait just as long to hear the Simpsons sing the "New Orleans" song again as we did to see Homer order Khlau Kalash in the shadow of the World Trade Center (and wash it down with a cold refreshing can of crab juice). Thinking positively staves off despair. It averts recessions. It isn't just a swamp into which the weak-minded sink, leaving the corrupt holding the reins; it's also empowerment in the hands of the people, taking hold of their own destinies, the way we like to think we used to.

And I'm not going to root for an economic downturn or the destruction of a major American city just to spite leaders I don't like. Granted, I haven't had this tested yet, as I didn't give a fig for politics prior to 9/11 (and just sort of generically liked Clinton anyway). But after 2008, all bets are off, and we'll see who gets to keep hold of the moral high ground, and who gets shoved off into stagnant floodwater.

UPDATE: This from MoveOn.org:

Hurricane Katrina has presented a defining moment for President Bush. So far, it's defined him as indecisive, uninterested in poverty and critically unprepared. Last night's nationally televised address was an attempt by the White House to mark a turning point.

But President Bush failed to deeply address either of the core vulnerabilities Katrina exposed—the federal government's inability to respond to disaster, and the poverty and racism that still remains in America. With the media jury out on the speech, we can help draw focus to Bush's failure to deliver on his core promise—to protect America from disaster.

Our ad team worked overnight, preparing a rapid-response TV ad we want to get on the air as soon as possible, to help shape this historic moment. If we can raise $250,000 today, we can do it. Can you contribute?

https://political.moveon.org/donate/nosafertvad.html?id=6003-396431-YXHSMp_3e1wfdhHYfCq9PA&t=4

Even a small contribution will get the ad running if we all chip in. While the money we've all contributed for relief and recovery is critically important, we also need to fight to make sure our government does its job because government efforts will outstrip private efforts by a magnitude of hundreds. Advocacy is as important as charity at this time in our nation's history.

As Republican 9/11 Commission chair Thomas Kean said Thursday, "What makes you mad is that it's the same things we saw on 9/11. Whoever is responsible for acting in these places hasn't acted. Are they going to do it now? What else has to happen for people to act?"1

The ad, titled "No Safer," draws a contrast between the promises made and the reality today—explaining that despite all the money, reports and restructuring, America isn't any more prepared for a disaster now than it was four years ago, and President Bush doesn't have a plan to make us safe.

Since September 11th, we have been told repeatedly by the president that America is safer. That message—that he would protect America—is the central reason why he won re-election. Those claims turned out to be false.

What are these people, Howard Hughes' mother? You are not safe! For God's sake, people, grow a frickin' spine!

I am not interested in being "safe". Life isn't "safe". This is a world of bags of sentient meat fending off hostile physics and biology. We pilot multi-ton steel tanks down asphalt runways at 80 miles an hour. We eat food we didn't cook and sterilize ourselves. We get cancer and die from taking too many breaths or from swallowing tiny bits of saliva continuously over sixty years. "Safe"? Whatever happened to rugged individualism? Whence the frontier spirit? I just got back from three weeks in Alaska among people who have to carry shotguns and axes on a daily basis to fend off bears on the way back to their cabins, even if they've got Lexuses parked in the garages. How would they react to you telling them they're not "safe" from a hurricane or a terrorist attack? They'd laugh you out of town if you're lucky.

Look: if you want to be safe, you avoid high-risk areas and high-risk activities. Don't jump out of planes. Don't climb El Capitan. Don't ride your bike home from work once it starts getting dark in the evenings. Don't build a house below sea level or on the San Andreas Fault or in grizzly country. Don't go to the Super Bowl or the Times Square New Years Eve party when terrorists brag about having anthrax bombs. But doesn't it shame you a little bit, to see all the millions of people out there brave enough to do all those things and put on a happy face while doing it?

Yeesh. MoveOn.org is going to end up insulting even its fans at this rate.

(Oh, and "racism"? Blow it out your ear.)

UPDATE: Okay, I did like Clinton. For God's sake, what happened to all that admirable apolitical support and solidarity he'd shown until now? This is a very disappointing development.


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© Brian Tiemann