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"HOARD WEAPONS, GROW GILLS, AND LEARN TO COMMUNICATE WITH SERPENTS." Jonah Goldberg is upset that, two years after Katrina, the news media are still under-reporting their own failures.
"Few of us can forget the reports from two years ago. CNN warned that there were "bands of rapists, going block to block." Snipers were reportedly shooting at medical personnel. Bodies at the Superdome, we were told, were stacked like cordwood. The Washington Post proclaimed in a banner headline that New Orleans was a "A City of Despair and Lawlessness," insisting in an editorial that "looters and carjackers, some of them armed, have run rampant." Fox News anchor John Gibson said there were "all kinds of reports of looting, fires and violence. Thugs shooting at rescue crews."[...]
Reports of the Superdome being a slaughterhouse were repeated, even though dozens of news organizations had access to the building. CBS alone had 200 people in New Orleans, and yet it couldn't find those bodies stacked to the ceiling or a single rape victim from the roving bands of "Mad Max"-style marauders. That's because nobody was raped or murdered in the Superdome."
Yes, who was it, in a moment of characteristic cruelty masquerading as humor, that first made the Mad Max-Katrina connection? Jonah Goldberg. Thanks for reminding us.
Confoundingly, Jonah recognizes that several newspapers "received accolades for debunking the hysteria less than a month after the hurricane." So, basically, his beef is that news organizations haven't continued to flog themselves over their mistakes, and have instead chosen to nitpick over irrelevancies such as the Bush administration's scandalous, continuing incompetence/disinterest in dealing with the disaster. Jonah’s outrage is, to say the very least, selective.
I do think Jonah makes a fair point about the persistence of rumors, and about journalists' being "invested in the dominant narratives." I'd suggest that exhibit A for this is the U.S. media's uncritically repeating the Bush administration's various myths and misrepresentations about the Iraq threat. Somehow I doubt Jonah's very interested in journalists interrogating themselves over that, even though the consequences have been inestimably more disastrous, and especially since the conservative movement is still very much invested in perpetuating those myths.
--Matthew Duss
COMMENTS (10)
actually, what world does jonah live in? "few of us can forget?" indeed, most of us - at the time - suggested that (possibly racist) hysteria was dominating the immediate headlines, and most of us then realized, as further reportage on the scene emerged, that thosoe original headlines were wrong and moved on.
but over there in parallel universe land, "few of us can forget" the stories we invented; how does he keep getting published?
Posted by: howard | September 4, 2007 11:15 AM
Um, apologies for the nitpick, but that was Waterworld, not Mad Max.
Not that that makes Jonah any less of a wanker.
Posted by: Eli | September 4, 2007 11:49 AM
No, Jonah mentioned both Waterworld and Mad Max. Plus Lord of the Flies.
He really is a sickening excuse for a human being, isn't he?
Incidentally, those archives have disappeared from the NRO servers. Anyone got a screen cap?
Posted by: zuzu | September 4, 2007 1:20 PM
Reporters were more concerned with barefoot black people taking shoes out of abandoned stores than they were about suburban cops robbing refugees, both white and black, on the bridges, and turning them back at gunpoint.
The networks did extended 5 minute pieces on looting. Reporters were at the shopping centers with camera crews, disgustedly scolding people on camera for taking bottled water. If someone took a 6-pack of beer or a pack of cigarettes, that invalidated all excuses of need. The fact that one guy took a TV meant that everyone floating face-down in 6 feet of water was lying.
And Jonah wants us all to refocus on the guy with the TV.
Posted by: johng | September 4, 2007 1:26 PM
The Pantload shuttles quickly from "news anchor" John Gibson's racist "Thug" porn to the horrifying spectre of "[i]nterviewers transformed into outright scolds of administration officials" (Imagine!) as if they were the same thing.
Note to the Load: they're not.
Thanks.
Posted by: nasruddin | September 4, 2007 2:55 PM
I just can't get over how well Doughy Pantload fits this guy.
Posted by: Henk | September 4, 2007 3:20 PM
To see how "invested in the dominant narrative" the Right is, simply go to one of their forums and type the word "Katrina". There is no convincing these people that their fantasies of black folks in wolfpaks carrying stolen firearms, murdering rescue workers and raping anything that moved.... simply have NO basis in fact. They will swear to you that they saw it with their own two eyes, will load their tales with accounts from "a friend of a friend" and quote news stories from the time as though they were gospel. It's clear to me that the racism that so many have claimed to have vanished from our society has simply been repressed and painted over...Katrina brought it to the surface and showed just how ugly the inner landscape of the Right really is.
Posted by: That American Chap | September 4, 2007 4:09 PM
He really is a sickening excuse for a human being, isn't he?
What else would you expect from the spawn of Lucianne Goldberg?
Posted by: Linda | September 4, 2007 6:45 PM
so did the story about the police blocking the bridge away from the superdome? I was never clear about whether that was true or not.
Anyone?
Posted by: Aaron | September 4, 2007 9:59 PM
It disappeared from NRO's servers?
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzFiYjYzOTY4OWJiZmMyMDBjYzAxYjA5ZmMxMmYxOWM=
Posted by: conspiracy theorist | September 7, 2007 2:26 PM