Los Angeles Times, Glenn Beck Wildfire Comments

ENOUGH!

Media Still Hammering Beck, Ignoring Others







Days after it rightly should have faded from view, agenda- driven mainstream media liberals are determined to keep the flap over Glenn Beck's wildfire comments alive.

Since a number of commentators went overboard with fire- related silliness, on both the left and right, singling out Beck reveals clear partisan motivations.

On Wednesday, your Radio Equalizer even agreed with Internet lefties who took Beck to task for associating disaster victims with those who "hate America". It was a stupid comment, plain and simple.

But equally moronic statements by Randi Rhodes, Mike Malloy and other liberal talk hosts have been ignored by the mainstream media, including assertions that the Bush family and Blackwater actually started the fires.

Yet the Los Angeles Times, which has yet again revisited the Beck controversy in an editorial published today, has no interest in covering those inconvenient facts, even after we contacted the reporter who wrote the most recent article on the subject.

From the new Op-Ed piece:

Don't blame the fire victims

Now is the time to show sympathy instead of blaming Malibu liberals and risk-taking homeowners.

October 27, 2007

Conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck is the latest high-profile figure to say something idiotic in the face of tragedy, but he's got plenty of company. Disasters can bring out the best in humanity as rescuers risk their lives to save others and communities band together to rebuild, but they can also bring out the worst.

"I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today," Beck told the audience of his nationally syndicated show on Monday, as parts of Malibu were in flames. That actually ranks pretty low on the mindless insensitivity scale compared to some of the sludge uttered in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said his city was devastated because "God is mad at America"; in this, he was in full agreement with a host of Islamist bloggers who claimed that the hurricane represented Allah's judgment on America's sins, including a Kuwaiti minister who wrote that the storm was "a wind of torment and evil that Allah has sent to this American empire."

Blaming the victims has been a highly popular sport in California over the last week, as blogs and other public forums have been swamped by comments about the recklessness and irresponsibility of those who choose to live in wild areas. Some of the criticism is justified. As noted above, all taxpayers subsidize the firefighting services needed by a few who live in the state's tinder-dry hillsides, and government has been far too permissive in allowing development there. But canyon dwellers aren't breaking any laws, and most take seriously their responsibilities to clear brush, insure their homes and otherwise reduce fire risks. Like most of us in this gorgeous but dangerous state, they just want to live somewhere beautiful.

In the midst of tragedy, it's comforting to think that the victims somehow deserved what they got: I'm not as dumb as those people who live in the San Diego County wilderness, so it'll never happen to me. The same instinct is doubtless behind the urge to blame disasters on divine retribution: Nothing like this will happen to me, because God's on my side and hates my enemies. Or, as in Beck's case, the criticism may be simple schadenfreude: The Hollywood liberals in Malibu who disagree with my opinions, and therefore hate America, sure are in a world of hurt now.

[...]

Sure, they do point the finger at Nagin as well, but that's old news. What about those on the left who have used the latest tragedy to further an extremist anti- Bush agenda?


At this point, how can we arrive at any conclusion other than that the LA Times is in full agreement with the libtalk crowd? Pounding away at a conservative talker while ignoring equally disturbing transgressions from the Air America gang exposes the paper's inherent ideological dishonesty.

Meanwhile, the Times isn't the only publication singling out Beck for scorn: here's a Tennessee paper slamming him today, as well as more whining at the Huffington Post and the anti- FOX cabal.

Why can't any of you on the left admit Rhodes and Malloy are just as guilty? Are you afraid of inciting the wrath of the left- wing fringe?


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