Haiti: WTF?

would never happen

wait what did he do now

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/01/15/2010-01-15_rush_limbaugh_haiti_earthquake_comments_are_really_stupid_says_white_house_press.html

ie pretty much exactly what you'd expect

<3 u Roger Ebert:

A Letter to Rush Limbaugh
/ / / January 14, 2010

To: Rush Limbaugh
From: Roger Ebert

You should be horse-whipped for the insult you have paid to the highest office of our nation.

Having followed President Obama's suggestion and donated money to the Red Cross for relief in Haiti, I was offended to hear you suggest the President might be a thief capable of stealing money intended for the earthquake victims.

Here is a transcript from your program on Thursday:

Justin of Raleigh, North Carolina: "Why does Obama say if you want to donate some money, you could go to whitehouse.gov to direct you how to do so? If I wanted to donate to the Red Cross, why do I have to go to the White House page to donate?"

Limbaugh: "Exactly. Would you trust the money's gonna go to Haiti?"

Justin: "No."

Rush: "But would you trust that your name's gonna end up on a mailing list for the Obama people to start asking you for campaign donations for him and other causes?"

Justin: "Absolutely!"

Limbaugh: "Absolutely!"

That's what was said.

Unlike you and Justin of Raleigh, I went to Obama's web site, and discovered the link there leads directly to the Red Cross. I can think of a reason why anyone might want to go via the White House. That way they can be absolutely sure they're clicking on the Red Cross and not a fake site set up to exploit the tragedy.

But let me be sure I have this right. You and Justin agree that Obama might steal money intended for the Red Cross to help the wretched of Haiti.

This conversation came 48 hours after many of us had seen pitiful sights from Port au Prince. Tens of thousands are believed still alive beneath the rubble. You twisted their suffering into an opportunity to demean the character of the President of the United States.

You have a sizable listening audience. You apparently know how to please them. Anybody given a $400 million contract must know what he is doing.

That's what offends me. You know exactly what you're doing.

OK, when I was suggesting the termination of any gov't contract Rush might currently enjoy, I hadn't yet found out he also said THAT.

Back in May, he said this about Bill Clinton's appointment as special envoy to Haiti: “I’m just gonna tell you, if I was named envoy to Haiti, I’d quit government. Envoy to Haiti? You can’t even pick up a prostitute down there without genuine fear of AIDS. This is not Clinton’s place.”

At what point does this man suffer some sort of status penalty?

freedom of speech, y'all

Any article that begins with "You should be horse-whipped" earns an A+++ from me.

Que, dude has the right to say whatever he wants to, but gov't can choose not to throw business his way and wouldn't be restricting his personal freedoms if the contract were cancelled or simply not renewed.

ebert has turned from a national treasure into something even treasure-er recently

hes turned into national treasure 2: book of secrets

i can't imagine the public outcry if the Armed Forces radio ditched Limbaugh--it would never ever ever happen. i'm sure he is popular with the armed forces. and though his comments are nasty and despicable, canceling his show would be censorship

Que OTM, sadly.

they could move his show to the middle of the night and broadcast the sound of a braying jackass in his old timeslot, see how long it took people to notice

i can't imagine the public outcry if the Armed Forces radio ditched Limbaugh--it would never ever ever happen. i'm sure he is popular with the armed forces. and though his comments are nasty and despicable, canceling his show would be censorship

― that sex version of "blue thunder." (Mr. Que), Friday, 15 January 2010 22:05 (4 minutes ago) Permalink

But isn't the programming determined by the military brass? How can it be censorship if all the programming is determined by a few people anyway?

if they cancel his show because of the jackass stuff he says, it's censorship

It doesn't matter if its truly "censorship" in the strictest definition of the word, Rush fans will scream it anyway.

It only isn't censorship if he violates a law or a regulation.

Surely they can fuck with his timeslot, though.

ugh I keep looking at "timeslot" and thinking "coinslot" ugh

and on that note HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND EVERYBODY

Have we covered this already? http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2010/0114102wyclef1.html

Wyclef's YELE isn't the charity it's purported to be.

I'm still not convinced that this would be a 'censorship' issue, as he would still be free to broadcast to commercial markets. Therefore it's a subsidy issue or a morale issue. But yeah I know there would be a dittohead outcry if they yanked the AFR contract; just have to hope that those comments make him less popular with serving soldiers. Wesley Clark tried a campaign to get Rush yanked a couple of years ago but like everything else Wes has tried, meh.

Happy for him to keep his slot if I can see him being publically horsewhipped.

public outcry if the Armed Forces radio ditched Limbaugh--it would never ever ever happen

I'm in one of my 'you know the Right is right, I need to get a high powered sniper rifle' moods. The man is Satan's monkey and should be shot. Repeatedly.

Horsewhipping is unhumane, a simple .30-06 perforation in his head would be.

smdh.. what i think is, rush limbaugh should not be part of the haiti story. i mean, rush limbaugh will say more ignorant shit next week, and the next, and the next, and it's just what he does and what he's always done.

Actually, I'd just like to see him seriously humiliated in public, HIS public, but I have fonder sentiments about dried pond scum than I do about him today.

And daria is right, giving ANY attention to this parasite when there IS a real story of human devastation is a needless and foolish distraction.

There's a reasonable point in this article about being careful with how you donate and how you restrict your donations, but "Don't give money to Haiti" is a stupid fucking headline for it. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/01/15/dont-give-money-to-haiti/

Yeah, thats downright irresponsible.

Damn David Brooks gets to be on PBS and NPR as some kind of moderate conservative and then he says factually unsupported crap like this:

As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15brooks.html?em

Isn't Haiti about 60-70% Catholic?

That sounds accurate.

Harrison and Brooks blaming Haitian vodou religion rather than say colonialism is ridiculous and I don't know where they got that child-rearing thing from. Yes there's less poverty in the Dominican Republic, But Brooks makes it sound like that country is a country club now (rather than one which still has lots of poverty), and he wrongly suggests that it has suffered through the same number of problems as Haiti. Ugh.

also hey david brooks just as a heads up do u think it might be possible that a certain cultural fatalism might itself be a product of economic/structural pressures that make haitian life ~as it is lived~ appear pretty capricious? like if i'm totally poor and my bro died at a young age of a curable disease, and my mom and uncle etc, and i just sorta observe that most people don't live too long and are in general at the mercy of forces beyond their control, maybe it would make sense to me to adopt a worldview that tries to explain that

or: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/314/7089/1271

In comparisons among Chicago neighbourhoods, homicide rates in 1988-93 varied more than 100-fold, while male life expectancy at birth ranged from 54 to 77 years, even with effects of homicide mortality removed. This "cause deleted" life expectancy was highly correlated with homicide rates; a measure of economic inequality added significant additional prediction, whereas median household income did not. Deaths from internal causes (diseases) show similar age patterns, despite different absolute levels, in the best and worst neighbourhoods, whereas deaths from external causes (homicide, accident, suicide) do not. As life expectancy declines across neighbourhoods, women reproduce earlier; by age 30, however, neighbourhood no longer affects age specific fertility. These results support the hypothesis that life expectancy itself may be a psychologically salient determinant of risk taking and the timing of life transitions.

obv not exactly the same, but the point stands: if you can only expect yr life plans to be thwarted by shit you cannot in any way address, then yr gonna be fatalist

also, guys, voodoo isn't a bad word. i know it gets played up a lot in the media, but the fact is that much of haitian life IS informed by voodoo. not like everyone is sacrificing chickens all over the dang place, but like respectable church going grannies still believe (though they may not ~like~) in witch doctors and zombies and what have you.

not that anyone is really doing this but: getting defensive on haitians behalf when someone mentions voodoo is backhanded (and unintentional) culture chauvinism. "how dare he say that people practice voodoo! why, they're mostly christian down there!"

(btw my knowledge of this is NOT first-hand, so grains of salt. my friend is an anthro jd/phd who has studied voodoo for years, and has told me that SOME sort of belief in (or deference to) voodoo cultural practice is very tightly woven into what it means to be Haitian)

voodoo's basically a syncretic mashup of catholicism and various african traditions anyway isn't it?

also lol @ the idea that "life is capricious and planning futile" is somehow unique to voodoo and not present, in some form, in fairly major schools of all of the world's religions

btw kenan, not to be pedantic, but many haitians actually DO practice some kind of syncretic version of christianity and voodoo. my bro spent a lot of time down there (and in benin, where voodoo is thought to have originated, as well as in queens, where many recent immigrants live) the boundaries are blurrier than you might think

beside the point, however

― everybody's into weirdness right now (gbx), Wednesday, January 13, 2010 7:12 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

basically: yes.

smdh @ david brooks
boring conservative with no curiosity about, or respect for, any culture beyond whatever is middle class, tasteful, and found in bethesda md. yet he writes about religion and culture in haiti like he knows what he's talking about. i don't understand this.

his column on french hip hop back when those riots were happening was also insightful + relevant

So I have reviewed for DC newspapers various Haitian bands over the years-Djakout Mizik, Boukman Experyans, Beethova Obas, T-Vice, Top Vice, and others. I am trying to find out more info on how they are doing. Not that their fate is any more important than any others, but I am curious if anyone sees or hears anything. Sadly some have lost their lives and others are missing. I've been posting on ilm here:

Rolling Global Sublime Whirled "World" Music Thread 2010(with an emphasis on African likely)

I wonder if the big Haitian compas concert that was supposed to happen in Miami, Florida happened today?

things are looking pretty dire :(

Seeing those two imperialist criminals tapped by Bam as figureheads for Haitian relief in the Rose Garden yesterday really warmed the cockles of my heart. I'd love to send the pair of em into Port-au-Prince w/out Secret Service.

Jesus Christ dude you think you could set that shit aside for even this?

things are looking pretty dire :(

― I can't turn my face into a shart (dyao), Sunday, January 17, 2010 1:17 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah :(

xp rage, resentment, spleen

jon, THEY are not "setting it aside."

THEY and their predecessors made Haiti what it is and kept it that way.

Okay, I think I misread your intentions with that post. Apologies.