January 13, 2007
Who Cares About Nebraska?
I don't get to listen to Rush, CPR or Sean Hannity at work anymore because the internet firewalls at my company don't allow for online streaming, and I can't get AM radio reception. So I miss my daily dose of live conservative commentary.
I wish I had been listening to Rush yesterday, but fortunately he posts a lot of good things that happen on his show on his website. A woman called yesterday from Nebraska to talk about how Nebraskans are dealing with the aftermath of back-to-back icestorms in late December, which she said had been likened to a class 5 hurricane. Here's part of the call transcript:
CALLER:...I realize that they are very serious ranching problems in Colorado but the fact that they are covering shoveling in Colorado and didn't mention that there were thousands of people in central Nebraska who were without power, just kind of floored me. But I do know why it wasn't coveted by the national media, and I kind of want to thank them, because we here are very independent, very self-sufficient, and extremely caring people. We are America's heartland.
RUSH: Flyover country.
CALLER: Mm-hmm. But --
RUSH: Well, that's what the liberals call it.
CALLER: Oh, flyover, that's right.
RUSH: You're just something they fly over on their way to their sophisticated hangouts on both coasts.
CALLER: That's true. But, you know, we're not newsworthy because our governor wasn't on television complaining that FEMA wasn't here at our door. What was going on here is what should happen in the midst of national disasters. People were looking out for everybody else. Everybody who had something was looking for how they could share it with their neighbor. People were looking out for old people who were without power. People were looking out for people with small children who were without power. People were driving out into the country to get people who were stranded in their homes. I know an electrician of mine who was hooking up generators for free. They had brought in power workers from all over the country, and I just want to say, "Thank you, thank you, thank you," to all the people who worked on this and were working 15 to 18 hour days in the cold and in the snow, working to get us back on our feet, and everybody here, there was no whining. There was no complaining. There was power that was out for weeks!
RUSH: Great, and there was no FEMA --
CALLER: Yeah, there was no FEMA.
RUSH: -- and there was no FEMA in Denver, and there was no media anywhere blaming Bush for causing the national disaster.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: There was no media demanding that FEMA show up.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: And you know why? Because nobody in the media cares about you.
CALLER: Well, because we're not whiners and complainers. We're not exactly what make big news.
RUSH: Yeah, but it's not that.
CALLER: We're not busy cursing the darkness. We're too busy lighting our candle. We are trying to find our own way out of what is befalling us. I can tell you I am so grateful to live among the people that I live with, and I just cannot say enough how proud I am.
RUSH: Well, let me tell you something.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm?
RUSH: People would be tempted -- in listening to you, Ann, people would be tempted -- to think that your description of events is what's unique in this country. Sadly, that's not the case. Your description of how neighborhoods and states band together and help themselves in times of trouble like this is quite common in this country, because the people of this country are good people. What's unique and unfortunate is the kind of reaction we got after Hurricane Katrina. It's not all that unique, but there are people who have been raised to sit around and wait for the government to do whatever it is that they need done. They know nothing else. So you go to these very liberal enclaves and those attitudes exist. I've always found it fascinating that, in that big snowstorm, the ice storms that you're describing, there was more coverage of the cattle that were stranded than of the 44 people that they had to dig out of cars and so forth who had died.
That got reported, but all this media was showing helicopters dropping hay and other kind of things for wildlife that was stranded out there to eat. It's not hard to understand why that was not sexy to the media. For one thing, the skin color was wrong. It would be hard to make victims out of people like that. But New Orleans was made to order. New Orleans fits a template of American liberalism -- or the aftermath of Katrina, I should say, fits a template -- and that is, we still have a two-class society in this country: "Poor black people, and they are not cared for. "They are not liked. They are ignored, and if we could, we'd just find a way to be done with them," and that's what the media thinks a lot of people in this country have as a racist attitude. So here came this hurricane, and here came all this destruction, and here comes the government totally ill-equipped to deal with something this large. No bureaucracy anywhere could have, and you throw in the hatred of George W. Bush and the desire to do anything possible to ruin his administration, and it's like the Duke rape case.
That fits a template, a societal template that the left has. Look at the way the University administration there reacted! The minute the charges were made, the lacrosse team is shut down, the coach is fired and the kids are kicked out of school. One shred of evidence has not ever been produced to say these kids did it, and yet the faculty and everybody was demanding that they be run out of Durham, run out of town forever, because it fits a template that liberals and the media in this country have. What happened to you doesn't fit a template. It's ignored. It's not interesting to them -- and the success stories are not what they're about. They're not going to run around and do stories on how well you all banded together and people sacrificed and the electrician you're talking about was donating generators. That's not sexy. That's not news. They want victims. They want destruction. They want death and they want mayhem that they can show, so that they can then point fingers of blame at it! Plus, it'd be very hard for them to get there. It was an ice storm and it was snow. They'll stand out in the middle of the street in the cities where they live to report that it's snowing, but to actually go into that mess themselves -- and some of the airports were closed, it was a convenient excuse not to get there, just take local footage from the helicopters that were flying around shooting things. It's a great story. I'm glad you called, Ann. Thanks much.
Nebraskans going through hardships in the aftermath of a tremendous storm, and the media barely mentions it. But with Katrina and New Orleans, you had round the clock coverage for weeks. And they're still harping on it.
And the libs want to put fetters on programs like Rush's by reinstating the Fairness Doctrine because they don't like for their hypocrisy to be highlighted. This is why now, more than ever, we need these alternative voices to the pap being spoonfed to the American public by the MSM.
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