http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/05/even_if_you_don.phpNashville Flood Proves to Rightbloggers: Obama Hates America, White PeopleEven if you don't know much about rightbloggers, you probably know that since time immemorial conservatives have blamed the nation's problems and Democratic Administrations on something called the Liberal Media. This nefarious press syndicate (of which the Village Voice is considered a charter member) has, since WWII, managed to elect six Democratic U.S. Presidents, drive Richard Nixon from office, fluoridate our drinking water, and give the Pulitzer Prize to homosexuals.
At great peril to themselves, rightbloggers have manfully sought to reverse the Liberal Media's victories. And in their eyes, one of the Liberal Media's most ignominious victories has been Hurricane Katrina. Rightbloggers believe the Liberal Media unfairly exploited that event to make President Bush look bad, paving the way for President ObamaHitler. They have since prayed ceaselessly to Reagan and Ayn Rand for a way to redress this historic indignity.
Last week the city of Nashville was flooded, leaving at this writing 23 people dead and $1.5 billion in property damage. Sounds bad to you and us -- but rightbloggers have leapt on Nashville as the rightwing answer to Katrina: A natural disaster they could use to bring President ObamaHitler down.
The 2005 Katrina disaster and its negative impact on Republican fortunes is well known. But rightbloggers still think about Katrina the way neo-confederates think about the Civil War -- as a PR disaster.
Back in the day many of them tried to block the bloody Katrina tide from washing over the Republican Party. Take, as an example, AJStrata, who wrote in September of 2005, "...People do not buy the leftwing lunacy that Bush is responsible [for Katrina]... Folks, if the left wants to take the stand Bush and the Feds are to blame then maybe we should just let them. Those kinds of numbers in statewide and national polls would spell the end of any semblance of the democrat party."
Fond hope! But when Democrats rolled to victory in 2006, it became apparent that, to paraphrase Junior Kimbrough, things hadn't worked out. Rightbloggers mourned the Lost Cause. National Review's Jonah Goldberg told University of Wisconsin students that Katrina was "probably the biggest media scandal of the past 20 years."
Already the blogbrethren were casting blame and dreaming of revenge. To this end they sought a comparable disaster to hang on Obama. They haven't found one, but they've tried to make do with what they have found.
When floods hit Iowa in spring of 2009, Let's See Change roared, "Seems there's a double standard when it comes to what kind of folks get all the attention... especially from the liberal main stream media." "Where are the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help... where is good old Michael Moore?" asked Rightside VA. "When will Spike Lee say that the Federal government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?... When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a 'vanilla' Iowa.. because that's what God wants?"
(Detecting a little racial animosity in Rightside VA's commentary? You ain't seen nothin' yet.)
When a big oil spill happened in the Gulf earlier this month, rightbloggers gathered more confidence, if not evidence, of Obama malfeasance. "Obama's Weekly Address Ignores Oil Spill, Calls for Campaign Finance Reform Instead," announced NewsBusters. "Talk about your Katrina moments..."
When Rush Limbaugh suggested that environmentalists may have caused the spill via sabotage in order to pass the Cap and Trade bill, rightbloggers rushed to support him. "Limbaugh mocked Obama's dreadful response to the oil rig disaster yesterday," announced Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft. "Obama screwed up royally," said Frugal Cafe. "No Blaming Bush This Time!!!" yelled Oh Oh For Obama.
But they had trouble keeping their story straight. Some were outraged to learn that Obama had accepted campaign money from BP, the oil company behind the leak ("It looks like so many of the companies that have caused America so much grief lately were all top donors to the Obama campaign," said Another Black Conservative, without citing any of the other grief-causing contributors). Others, conversely, claimed Obama was persecuting BP in favor of his socialist agenda (Pundit & Pundette: "Thug-speak: 'We will keep our boot on the throat of BP.' This phrase was uttered by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar... this hostile rhetoric is reserved for BP, who, by all accounts, is taking responsibility for the disastrous accident and doing everything it can to fix it").
As Media Matters noticed, a whole bunch of other untoward events were labeled "Obama's Katrina" by the non-Liberal Media. Yet nothing seemed to stick.
Then Nashville was hit. At first the situation might seem a poor candidate for an Obama hit job. The death toll and property damage, while tragic, did not even remotely approach the hundreds of deaths and the massive destruction and displacement caused by Katrina in New Orleans. Also, the Obama Administration has sent high-level representatives to Tennessee, and FEMA is about to send aid. (No Tea Party resistance to this gummint encroachment has been noted -- "The moment arrived last week," reported Nashville's City Paper, "when even Tennessee's most ardent foes of big government welcomed help from Washington.")
But rightbloggers had been at bat a long while, and this time, no matter how far out of the strike zone the pitch was, they were determined to swing for the fences.