More Quality Work from Ms. Malkin
Michelle Malkin writes about Kanye West*, who last night said that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” on live TV:
Time magazine calls West “the smartest man in pop music” and put him on the cover last week… Guess he must be an avid Internet/blog reader. Too bad he didn’t read the Snopes summary of the “looting vs. finding” meme before he made a fool of himself before the world.
Yes, too bad:
Claim: Photograph captions describe a black man “looting” and a white couple “finding” supplies in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Status: True.
And while it’s difficult to draw conclusions from such a small sample of photographs (from two different news agencies, no less), I think it’s ridiculous to call anyone wading through waist-high water with a bag of food slung over their shoulder a “looter.” If you’re stealing flat screens, fine, you’re a looter. But if you’re taking food back to your family, you’re a just a normal goddamn human being.
*BTW, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to plug Kanye’s new album. It’s really, really good, so if you’re a hip-hop fan, buy it.
Also good:
WestSounds
Oh, and from a veteran of forensics events and aspiring speech and debate coach, Kanye wasn’t on something (none of the people wondering that about Uppitty Nigger ever seem to posit the same hypothesis to explain Bush’s difficulties with communication, despite Bush’s much more obvious symptoms — rapid blinking, cotton mouth foam in the corners of his mouth, working his jaw like Bobby Brown, etc. Odd, that.)
West had a lot he wanted to cover, wasn’t sure until right before he went up that he was going to actually do it and was justifiably nervous as hell to actually do it (no experience with extemporaneous advocacy speech I’m sure not to mention the backlash he had to know he’d face for doing it.) That’s how it looked from here.
I’ve seen plenty of nervous, unprepared but passionate speakers look and sound just that way and I’m pretty reticent to suspect that dozens of high school speech and debate geeks are medicated, especially medicated in apprently the exact same way that Kanye West was last night.
Didn’t take long for the Darkie on Drugs meme to get rolled out, though. Did it?
Mad Maxkin was presumably talking about the end of the Snopes piece, which, in my view, was pretty lame. The end of the piece claimed that “looting” was accurate in the first picture because the guy had walked into the store and “finding” was okay in the second because the couple “found” the food floating outside the store.
That’s a completely asinine distinction that only a wingnut could love. Using that rationale you can “find” your neighbor’s newspaper on the sidewalk. Or you could “find” the car that someone accidentally left the keys in. Wankers.
I live to loot 4-leaf clovers.
Maybe the wingnuts should think about why they’re more concerned about looting and gas prices while children are being raped and murdered.
Nah, why would they bother.
What, does Malkin just post a link to something that contradicts her thesis and cross her fingers, hoping that no one actually clicks on it, and that they just ascribe to her a certain cache for seeming to back her claim up with a Snopes link?
Yeah. Sullivan used to do that a lot as well.
Yesterday CNN did a follow up story on an earlier interview with a group of tourists trapped in the Ritz Carlton. Once the first story aired and their plight was known, buses were sent to evacuate them. The party included many doctors who were in town for a convention. The party had to walk through 4 blocks through the filthy water to reach the buses, so before leaving, the person being interviewed said that the doctors “went to a nearby drugstore and COMMANDEERED some antibiotics.”
COMMANDEERED. That’s not looting, is it?
Heavens no! Professionals do NOT loot. Only lazy stupid criminal niggers on welfare loot.
A Doctor looting? Shame on you!
The “finding vs looting” explanation is pretty much the one I’d put forward too, if I’d been accused of racism. Especially if I demonstrably was, and was equally certain I wasn’t.
Malkin – what a wingcnut.
Hey, g, I heard one of the Ritz Carlton folks say outright on NPR that they stole food from a local store, too. She didn’t call it finding, she was completely honest about it.
One time I was using may laptop to connect to my wifi network and I “found” my neighbors wifi signal. I now regulary find and use it–it’s not stealing, just finding, just like when I find those torrents to download on the found wifi signal.
God I love language.