| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
Stormy Blather
“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, author of
“The Debt--What America Owes To Blacks,” in a post on
Arianna Huffington’s Internet blog site.
You would think that a guy who once went on a 27-day
hunger strike for the cause of democracy in Haiti would know
better than to believe that people would be desperate enough to
resort to cannibalism after a mere four days without food. You
would think it would be particularly hard to believe given the
news footage showing hundreds, if not thousands, of people
looting stores of food (not to mention jewelry, television sets
and liquor). Does that really sound like a scenario for
widespread cannibalism to you? The inescapable conclusion,
then, is that Robinson believed it because for some perverse
psychological reason, he wanted to believe it. But why would
anybody want to believe that?
Well, let’s say you’re a black man and a diehard America-
hater right down to the core of your being; and let’s say you’re
looking for any excuse to believe the absolute worst about
America; and let’s say you have a psychological need to be able
to blame that worst on white people. And then, along comes
the storm of the age conveniently headed straight for New
Orleans, a city with a large population of poor blacks who will
be in serious jeopardy if they don’t find some way to evacuate
the city.
What would better satisfy your pathological desire to
believe the worst than the ghastly idea of black people being
helplessly turned into cannibals by the callous inaction of
monstrously evil whites? It couldn’t get much more horrifying
than that, right?
Nor could it get more patently ridiculous. There are and
have been refugee situations all over the world far worse than
this one, that last for months or even years, but the refugees
don’t resort to cannibalism ever, let alone after only four days.
But somebody “reports” that it’s happening with black people
in the Big Easy and Randall Robinson gobbles it up (no pun
intended) hook, line and sinker.
Robinson never mentioned where the cannibalism “reports”
came from, but a couple of days later he posted a retraction
because, he said, the reports “turned out to be
unsubstantiated.” Well, knock me over with a feather! No, not
because the reports turned out to be unsubstantiated, but
because he even bothered to post a retraction. Relative to most
other posters of such egregiously idiotic claptrap, his
retraction is a magnanimous gesture.
Still, correct my logic if it gets a bit squirrelly here, but if the
cannibalism reports were unsubstantiated a couple of days
after Robinson’s original post, weren’t they unsubstantiated
from the very beginning? And that begs the question: Why did
he make the post to begin with? But then, we’ve been over that,
haven’t we?
In the meantime, Jesse Jackson showed up on the scene to
make this revelatory observation: “Today I saw 5,000 African-
Americans on Highway 10, desperate, perishing, dehydrating,
babies crying--it looked like the hull of a slave ship. It’s so ugly
and obvious. The issue of race as a factor will not go away.”
Well, it certainly won’t go away as long as race hustlers like
Jackson go around relentlessly delivering the one-note message
to willing audiences that everything that is wrong in their lives
is a result of racism.
He also said it was poignant that blacks were suffering in
New Orleans, which once upon a time was the South’s biggest
slave-trade port. You’ve got to hand it to Jesse. He never
misses an opportunity to make some reference to slaves, or the
slave trade, or slave ships, or slave owners, or slave drivers, or
plantations full of slaves, or mint julep-drinking slave holders
down on the plantation.
The problem is, the overseer of this particular slave ship --
the mayor of New Orleans -- happens to be black himself and
when it comes to getting the slaves out of harm’s way, he failed
miserably. By now, everyone has heard about the hundreds of
municipal and school buses lined up neatly in vast parking lots
that could have been used to get potentially tens of thousands
of poor people out before Katrina actually hit.
In fact, doing just that was a part of the official plan as
detailed in “The Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation
and Sheltering Plan.” This plan states quite specifically that
“local transportation resources should be marshaled and
public transportation plans implemented as needed.
Announce the location of staging areas for people who need
transportation. Public transportation will concentrate on
moving people from the staging areas to safety in host parishes
. . . Etc, etc, etc.”
Kinda sounds like Ray Nagin, the undeniably black mayor of
New Orleans, was a bit derelict in his duty. But since the black
mayor of New Orleans is, indeed, undeniably black, how can the
catastrophe be written off as racism?
Simple: Because Bush, the white president, didn’t respond
fast enough since he doesn’t care about black people. Or
because his evil oil company-enriching environmental policies
caused global warming, which caused the hurricane which
caused the death and anguish of black people. Or because
funds were cut or diverted from levee projects that would have
saved the majority black city from the global warming-induced
storm which was callously allowed to occur in order to fill the
coffers of predominantly white corporations. Or insert your
ludicrous fantasy here.
On second thought, maybe the aggregate of poor, black
neighborhoods in New Orleans does resemble the hull of a slave
ship, but a liberal slave ship, adrift and on its way to nowhere,
offering no solutions, but only the same old tired mantra of
racism, racism, racism.
That’s how a different reverend with the first name Jesse
might view it, the Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson. This Reverend
Jesse is a black conservative and frequent critic of the
entrenched civil rights leadership who says that liberal black
leaders have not only failed, but exploited African-Americans.
About the aftermath of Katrina he had this to say: “The
truth is black people died, not because of President Bush or
racism, they died because of their unhealthy dependence on
the government and the incompetence of [Democratic]
Governor Kathleen Blanco.”
When he talks about “their unhealthy dependence on the
government,” I wonder if he might be talking about the
elephant in the living room here: the welfare state that keeps
poor blacks down by eliminating their need to ever get anything
through their own initiative, including even their own survival
during a natural disaster.
It‘s a message that needs to be preached to the high heavens,
but as long as the Reverend Jesse Jacksons far outnumber the
Reverend Jesse Petersons, it won’t happen.
“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, author of
“The Debt--What America Owes To Blacks,” in a post on
Arianna Huffington’s Internet blog site.
You would think that a guy who once went on a 27-day
hunger strike for the cause of democracy in Haiti would know
better than to believe that people would be desperate enough to
resort to cannibalism after a mere four days without food. You
would think it would be particularly hard to believe given the
news footage showing hundreds, if not thousands, of people
looting stores of food (not to mention jewelry, television sets
and liquor). Does that really sound like a scenario for
widespread cannibalism to you? The inescapable conclusion,
then, is that Robinson believed it because for some perverse
psychological reason, he wanted to believe it. But why would
anybody want to believe that?
Well, let’s say you’re a black man and a diehard America-
hater right down to the core of your being; and let’s say you’re
looking for any excuse to believe the absolute worst about
America; and let’s say you have a psychological need to be able
to blame that worst on white people. And then, along comes
the storm of the age conveniently headed straight for New
Orleans, a city with a large population of poor blacks who will
be in serious jeopardy if they don’t find some way to evacuate
the city.
What would better satisfy your pathological desire to
believe the worst than the ghastly idea of black people being
helplessly turned into cannibals by the callous inaction of
monstrously evil whites? It couldn’t get much more horrifying
than that, right?
Nor could it get more patently ridiculous. There are and
have been refugee situations all over the world far worse than
this one, that last for months or even years, but the refugees
don’t resort to cannibalism ever, let alone after only four days.
But somebody “reports” that it’s happening with black people
in the Big Easy and Randall Robinson gobbles it up (no pun
intended) hook, line and sinker.
Robinson never mentioned where the cannibalism “reports”
came from, but a couple of days later he posted a retraction
because, he said, the reports “turned out to be
unsubstantiated.” Well, knock me over with a feather! No, not
because the reports turned out to be unsubstantiated, but
because he even bothered to post a retraction. Relative to most
other posters of such egregiously idiotic claptrap, his
retraction is a magnanimous gesture.
Still, correct my logic if it gets a bit squirrelly here, but if the
cannibalism reports were unsubstantiated a couple of days
after Robinson’s original post, weren’t they unsubstantiated
from the very beginning? And that begs the question: Why did
he make the post to begin with? But then, we’ve been over that,
haven’t we?
In the meantime, Jesse Jackson showed up on the scene to
make this revelatory observation: “Today I saw 5,000 African-
Americans on Highway 10, desperate, perishing, dehydrating,
babies crying--it looked like the hull of a slave ship. It’s so ugly
and obvious. The issue of race as a factor will not go away.”
Well, it certainly won’t go away as long as race hustlers like
Jackson go around relentlessly delivering the one-note message
to willing audiences that everything that is wrong in their lives
is a result of racism.
He also said it was poignant that blacks were suffering in
New Orleans, which once upon a time was the South’s biggest
slave-trade port. You’ve got to hand it to Jesse. He never
misses an opportunity to make some reference to slaves, or the
slave trade, or slave ships, or slave owners, or slave drivers, or
plantations full of slaves, or mint julep-drinking slave holders
down on the plantation.
The problem is, the overseer of this particular slave ship --
the mayor of New Orleans -- happens to be black himself and
when it comes to getting the slaves out of harm’s way, he failed
miserably. By now, everyone has heard about the hundreds of
municipal and school buses lined up neatly in vast parking lots
that could have been used to get potentially tens of thousands
of poor people out before Katrina actually hit.
In fact, doing just that was a part of the official plan as
detailed in “The Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation
and Sheltering Plan.” This plan states quite specifically that
“local transportation resources should be marshaled and
public transportation plans implemented as needed.
Announce the location of staging areas for people who need
transportation. Public transportation will concentrate on
moving people from the staging areas to safety in host parishes
. . . Etc, etc, etc.”
Kinda sounds like Ray Nagin, the undeniably black mayor of
New Orleans, was a bit derelict in his duty. But since the black
mayor of New Orleans is, indeed, undeniably black, how can the
catastrophe be written off as racism?
Simple: Because Bush, the white president, didn’t respond
fast enough since he doesn’t care about black people. Or
because his evil oil company-enriching environmental policies
caused global warming, which caused the hurricane which
caused the death and anguish of black people. Or because
funds were cut or diverted from levee projects that would have
saved the majority black city from the global warming-induced
storm which was callously allowed to occur in order to fill the
coffers of predominantly white corporations. Or insert your
ludicrous fantasy here.
On second thought, maybe the aggregate of poor, black
neighborhoods in New Orleans does resemble the hull of a slave
ship, but a liberal slave ship, adrift and on its way to nowhere,
offering no solutions, but only the same old tired mantra of
racism, racism, racism.
That’s how a different reverend with the first name Jesse
might view it, the Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson. This Reverend
Jesse is a black conservative and frequent critic of the
entrenched civil rights leadership who says that liberal black
leaders have not only failed, but exploited African-Americans.
About the aftermath of Katrina he had this to say: “The
truth is black people died, not because of President Bush or
racism, they died because of their unhealthy dependence on
the government and the incompetence of [Democratic]
Governor Kathleen Blanco.”
When he talks about “their unhealthy dependence on the
government,” I wonder if he might be talking about the
elephant in the living room here: the welfare state that keeps
poor blacks down by eliminating their need to ever get anything
through their own initiative, including even their own survival
during a natural disaster.
It‘s a message that needs to be preached to the high heavens,
but as long as the Reverend Jesse Jacksons far outnumber the
Reverend Jesse Petersons, it won’t happen.