As you may recall, during the early days of the legacy media’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina, journalists were spinning almost as quickly as the hurricane itself. As Mickey Kaus wrote at the beginning of September, 2005:
I’m not saying Bush and the Feds don’t clearly deserve major grief for not getting today’s National Guard aid convoy into downtown New Orleans a couple of days earlier. Some people are probably dead as a result. But the commentators on Washington Week in Review seemed a little too happy when proclaiming this a “debacle” that will damage Bush politically for a long, long time. And I don’t think they were happy just because Bush has suffered a blow. I think it’s because the hurricane and its New Orleans aftermath at least seemed to solve a big problem for anti-Bush commentators and politicians. Previously, they couldn’t grouse about the Iraq War without seeming defeatist (and anti-liberationist and maybe even selfishly isolationist). Even the Clintons never figured a way out of that trap. But nature has succeded where they failed; it has opened up a way out, at least temporarily. Now Bush opponents can argue, in some cases quite accurately, that without the Iraq deployment aid would have gotten to New Orleans faster. And ‘if we can [tk] in Iraq, why can’t we [tk] in our own South?’ They aren’t being selfish. They are just asserting priorities! In short, Katrina gives them a way to talk about Iraq without talking about Iraq. No wonder Gwen Ifill smiles the “inner smile.”
So now that President Bush is gone, how are the left spinning the latest horrific national disaster?
But of course: “Olbermann Uses Devastating Haiti Earthquake…to Justify ObamaCare!” I’m not sure if that Newsbusters post from Brent Baker warrants an exclamation point — who couldn’t see that coming from a mile away?
The devastating earthquake in Haiti, which may have killed tens of thousands or more, “reminded” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann of why ObamaCare is needed in the United States as he saw “what health care reform really means” in Haiti’s “awful message of nightmarish reality.” Later, he seriously contended the Haiti disaster makes “a good frame of reference in terms of the health care issue,” as he speculated about a quake destroying Los Angeles:
How would survivors of something like this here fare in terms of getting on their own feet economically afterwards, with the health care system we have in place right now?
After smearing Rush Limbaugh as a “deranged racist,” Olbermann teased Wednesday night’s Countdown: “We are reminded of what health care reform really means by an awful message of nightmarish reality from a place, a place this time not so very far away.” MSNBC’s on-screen heading, as he spoke, sealed the link between Haiti and the domestic policy: “REAL REFORM NECESSARY; LATEST FROM HAITI.”
Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor reports, “US sends aircraft carrier to help with Haiti earthquake damage”; recall the abuse the left heaped upon President Bush for similarly dispatching such a potent rescue tool to the Indian ocean back in late 2004 and early 2005.
Related: “MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ Horrified Limbaugh Would Politicize Haiti Quake — Hours After Olbermann Did.”
After a generation spent politicizing absolutely every facet of life, what does the left consider beyond the realm of politics? We know from the last ten years, it’s certainly not natural disasters, either their causes or the response to them.
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