We’ve already heard about the disgusting statements of Pat Robertson about the Haiti earthquake disaster. Rush Limbaugh also couldn’t help making an ass of himself about the Haiti crisis.
On his radio show yesterday Limbaugh said the earthquake in Haiti will play right into Obama’s hands by allowing him to play up his “compassionate” and “humanitarian” credentials, and that the President will use this crisis to “boost his credibility with the black community.”
As if that weren’t enough, Limbaugh also pivoted off a caller who complained about Obama directing the public to the White House website to find charitable organizations operating in Haiti to promote a conspiracy theory that finding these charities via the White House website puts your money at risk of not reaching Haitians.
Limbaugh also seems to feel we’ve done enough already for Haiti: “We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”
The U.S. gives 0.9% of our budget to foreign aid. The biggest recipients are in the Middle East: Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan. The GDP of Haiti (2008) is $6.95B, the GDP of the U.S. is $14.2T. Haiti has a per capita income of $400/year. It’s desperately poor, but Limbaugh resents the pennies we send there, I guess.
Fox News followed Limbaugh’s lead in turning this into some kind of political issue. Faux News ran the president’s statement on Haiti word-for-word with this headline “Pres. Obama Reacts to Haiti Earthquake Faster Than Christmas Bomber.”
They do realize that no one died in the attempted Christmas underpants bomber attack, right?
The mainstream media, like the good little sheep they are followed right in Limbaugh’s footsteps.
Elected in part out of revulsion at the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, Obama now finds himself confronting an even more devastating and complex humanitarian crisis.
And, adding irony upon irony, the racial context of New Orleans is writ large in Port-au-Prince. Katrina cost George W. Bush what little standing he had among moderates in his own party in part because the shocking images of suffering in New Orleans were so racially imbalanced.
Now the Obama administration’s competence and compassion will be tested in a similar racial context—and with a much worse infrastructure. Obama and his aides understand all of this. The president was out early today with a strong statement about American efforts to deal with the aftermath of the devastating Haitian earthquake.
Shorter Newsweek: Obama has to respond because the victims are black. They are just saying it in a nicer way than Limbaugh did.