Breaking News
Posted by Eric Seymour on 12 September 2005 | 26 responses
Major power outage in Los Angeles. Thousands of homes and businesses are without electricity. Traffic jams (worse than usual). Police declare state of emergency. Where is President Bush??
Update: Millions, rather than thousands, were affected. Thankfully, power was restored to 90% of those after about 90 minutes. Although authorities have blamed the incident on a utility worker’s mistake, the Los Angeles Times‘ editorial board reportedly is still looking for a way to blame the blackout on the Bush Administration (or, failing that, to prove that the outage disproportionately affected minorities, then display righteous indignation).
26 Responses to “Breaking News”
Yeah, because there’s no difference between a blackout in a city and a federally declared state of emergency in which likely thousands of people die.
Can we see a citation on the thousands being dead?
No, you can’t because it was a complete fabrication willingly swallowed by left wing fools like…..
Deep.
The total death toll right now stands at over 400, and searching and cleanup has hardly begun.
hint
Okay, okay, so it’s my fault that GW was hanging out on my back porch while grilling burgers and dogs …
… don’t worry, I not only feel guilty about snarfing up all the President’s time, but also for having a house … with power and high-speed internet access even!
Okay, Okay I admit it’s mostly my fault. How was I supposed to know that I shouldn’t press the ‘red button?’ I couldn’t help it, I mean there I was hanging out on the back porch, cooking burgers and dogs for GW when he went to the fridge for a Grape flavored PowerAde …
DOn’t worry, not only do I feel guilty for abasconding all of the President’s time, but I also have an immense sense of shame for having a home .. with food … and electricity … and high-speed internet access.
Where is President Bush??
They finally found him — he’s in Houston handing out fat Katrina-related rebuilding contracts to his friends and associates!
“Choo-choo…git on the Gravy Train, boys!”
Balta,
You took offense when I said you cheered the deaths of US soldiers, now you are cheering for a higher death toll from Katrina. Where is all the love man? You are going to make a great lawyer: heartless, ruthless and willing to celebrate the deathes of others to score a debating point. Bravo!
Eric, satire only works when the things being satirized are in fact risible or ridiculous. When what you’re aiming to satirize is, in fact, tragic, then you just come off looking like a jerk. Maybe you think that some Democrats are over-the-top in their accusations against the Bush administration, but to find your post funny requires thinking it beyond the pale to have asked for any sort of serious response from the federal government whatsoever, and more than that, thinking that it’s basically appropriate to use the disaster as a source of humor. And, looking at the images still coming in from Louisiana, it’s hard to find either of those things credible. And thus the ’satire’ comes off very, very badly. (To be clear: I don’t think you are a jerk, but I think Balta’s right that you’ve just missed the mark rather badly here.)
Suppose that, some short interval after 9/11/01, some overcaffeinated Albanian truck driver accidentally drove his truck into a Dunkin Donuts, destroying it utterly. Now suppose someone wrote a blog post at that time about how this accident ‘changes everything’, and that we should gear up to invade Albania, and shouldn’t the government provide some sort of fund to compensate the victims of this heinous act of Caffeinofascism? It’s clear that the author of such a ‘humor’ piece would not be excused from charges of jerkness, merely by saying, “Oh, didn’t you see? It’s a satire!”
When what you’re aiming to satirize is, in fact, tragic, then you just come off looking like a jerk.
What I’m satirizing is not the tragedy, nor even the criticisms of the federal response (which obviously was bungled, along with state and local responses). I’m satirizing the idea that President Bush should drop all his other activities and personally oversee responses to crises. I’m sorry you didn’t understand that.
“drop all his other activities”
Read: cancel pressing photo-ops with country music stars and end his record-long vacation early.
Still can’t stop being a snarky punk can you Balta?
Balta,
As I said in a previous comment thread, the “photo-op” occurred backstage after a 60-year V-J Day celebration at a Navy base. The President received a guitar as a gift, and a few pictures were taken. This happens all the time with Presidents, and it probably took 30 seconds. Of course, the left-wing echo chamber has taken this and made a big deal out of it.
As for the Bush “vacation,” we already covered that in this post.
The photo was the perfect metaphor for the president’s response to the unfolding disaster in the Gulf (you know, Bush strums while New Orleans drowns…). That’s why the left made such a big deal out of it.
Right JohnS, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
I don’t know… maybe the power outage is Bush’s fault. Maybe those utility workers are political appointees?
No… silly me. Bush saves unimportant posts for his blatant political hacks, like heading FEMA.
Hey Finlay, if the shoe fits…
BTW, Steve Gilliard just linked to a strikingly similar bit of nonsense bit of nonsense over at:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_09_11_corner-archive.asp#076267
CAN I BEAT KOS AND DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND TO THE PUNCH? [Cliff May]
The power is out in Los Angeles – and where the hell is George W. Bush?
Why hasn’t he said anything empathetic yet? It’s been hours!
Does he even care what the people of Los Angeles are going through? Not everyone in Hollywood can just get into a Range Rover and turn on the air conditioning. Some people only have Mercedes and BMWs and red Corvettes.
How long is the rescue effort going to take? Surely, Bush is not waiting on the mayor and the governor again. Big-foot them now! I’ll bet Bush is playing his silly banjo.
Posted at 05:17 PM
Bet it had Cornerites in stitches.
But that’s just the danger of satire, Eric — you don’t get to stipulate what you were or weren’t trying to make fun of, but the satire must stand (or fall) on its own. The whole thing comes along as a sort of irony gestalt. And, as your post stands, it is effectively declaring the disaster in Louisiana to be of sufficiently low importance that it may be compared to the blackout in LA, in being ridiculous that the president be asked to make it a priority item in his schedule. There’s just no way to pull this piece of satire off without thereby downplaying the horrors in Louisiana. Again, if someone said in my post-9/11 case, “Oh, I’m just trying to satirize [insert anyone who you think reacted the in a ludicrous way to 9/11]“, we just wouldn’t let them off the hook with that.
The point you’re trying to make, about whether it is fair to attack the president for not responding more swiftly & in person to the disaster, is surely a legitimate point to argue for. (I mean, I think it’s wrong, but I don’t think it’s bizarre or inconceivable or anything like that.) But — and I mean this in a friendly way, not as an attack — this is just a poor way to make such a point. Satire is a very blunt instrument, and tends to end up clobbering everything in & around the point that one might be trying to make. In this instance, the club caught some things that you didn’t mean for it to.
Why do conservatives always have to be the ones to tone down the rhetoric? Tell it people at the dailykos.
phil, I made my point abundantly clear–I even italicized the crux of my satire. Satire is offensive to those who are targeted by it, so I’m not surprised the usual liberal suspects here got their knickers in a twist, but I’m not going to let you get away with twisting my words.
“I’m satirizing the idea that President Bush should drop all his other activities and personally oversee responses to crises”
Uh, isn’t that the President’s job? By definition of the word, ‘crisis’, shouldn’t that take priority over ‘other activities’? You could use the same ‘logic’ to give Bush an escape hatch out of almost any situation. Don’t you honestly think that maybe Bush was a little slow in the response to Katrina and it’s effects, the largest natural disaster in the US? I’m sure to some people who are rabidly anti-Bush he’s getting the blame for everything, which I don’t think is fair, and maybe that’s what your satire is aiming at counter-balancing. Unfortunately it comes across, unintended or not, that the idea that Bush was slow in responding is a ridiculous point, when other Republicans and Bush himself seem to be acknowledging that there were problems.
As an aside, I see that some posters and commenters like to use words like ‘liberal’ and ‘right-wing’, which add about nothing to the conversation. To criticize Bush does not mean you’re liberal or left-wing. As if ‘liberal’ is even a bad word; I think one of the biggest liberals that ever lived (assuming he did) was Jesus.
Well, it appears that this attempt at satire was not a howling success. I’ll bet you’d have much better luck with this story:
“Commanders Ordered Not To Fire Gays Until War’s End.”
Eric,
You screwed up. Accept it and back off. You really look stupid otherwise.
Just to be clear: this isn’t a partisan issue, or even a political one. It’s simply the way that humor and satire work. There’s just no sense to be made of “oh, my italics showed the part where the satire was”. Jokes don’t work that way — for there to be a joke in there at all, there has to be an implicit comparison between the LA blackout and the flooding in Louisiana, which the joke is inviting the reader to make. (Ted Cohen’s marvelous study of jokes, Jokes, has much to say on this issue of implicit filling-in; everyone should check it out, if for no other reason than to see a philosophy book with an index of punch lines.) So you can’t disown the comparison without disowning the joke altogether.
I went out of my way to make clear that I didn’t think you meant to have such an awful comparison in there; and to make clear my objection has nothing to do with the basic political point you are trying to make (even though I do disagree with that point). I did nothing to ‘twist your word’ — your words, in this case, had already twisted themselves. And I am trying to help you see that & give you a chance to retract. You should of course make whatever argument you like against those who think that Pres. Bush should’ve gotten on the spot right away; but don’t try to make it through this type of humor, because there’s just no way to do it without making a comparison that I’m pretty sure you don’t want to make.