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Even if you don't know much about rightbloggers, you probably know that

since time immemorial conservatives have blamed the nation's problems

and Democratic Administrations on something called the Liberal Media.

This nefarious press syndicate (of which the Village Voice is considered a charter member) has since WWII managed

to elect six Democratic U.S. Presidents, drive Richard Nixon from

office, fluoridate our drinking water, and give the Pulitzer Prize to homosexuals.

At great peril to themselves, rightbloggers have manfully sought to

reverse the Liberal Media's victories. And in their eyes, one of the

Liberal Media's most ignominious victories has been Hurricane Katrina.

Rightbloggers believe the Liberal Media unfairly exploited that event to

make President Bush look bad, paving the way for President ObamaHitler.

They have since prayed ceaselessly to Reagan and Ayn Rand for a way to

redress this historic indignity.

Last week the

Nashville was flooded, leaving at this writing 23 people dead and $1.5 billion in property damage.

Sounds bad to you and us -- but rightbloggers have leapt on Nashville

as the rightwing answer to Katrina: A natural disaster they could use to

bring President ObamaHitler down.

The 2005 Katrina disaster and

its negative impact on Republican fortunes is

well-known. But rightbloggers still think about Katrina the way

neo-confederates think about the Civil War -- as a PR disaster.

Back

in the day many of them tried to block the bloody Katrina tide from

washing over the Republican Party. Take, as an example, A J Strata, who wrote in September 2005,

"...People do not buy the leftwing lunacy that Bush is responsible [for

Katrina]... Folks, if the left wants to take the stand Bush and the Feds

are to blame then maybe we should just let them. Those kinds of numbers

in statewide and national polls would spell the end of any semblance of

the democrat party."

Fond hope! But when Democrats rolled to

victory in 2006, it became

apparent that, to paraphrase Junior Kimbrough, things hadn't worked out.

Rightbloggers mourned the Lost Cause. National Review's Jonah Goldberg told University of Wisconsin

students

that Katrina was "probably the biggest media scandal of the past 20

years."

Already the blogbrethren were casting

blame and dreaming of revenge. To

this end they sought a comparable disaster to hang on Obama. They

haven't found one, but they've tried to make do with what they have

found.

When floods hit Iowa in spring 2009, Let's See Change roared, "Seems there's a double

standard when it comes to what kind of folks get all the attention...

especially from the liberal main stream media." "Where are the Hollywood

celebrities holding telethons asking for help... where is good old

Michael Moore?" asked Rightside VA. "When will Spike Lee say that the

Federal government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?... When

will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a

'vanilla' Iowa.. because that's what God wants?"

(Detecting a little racial animosity in Rightside VA's commentary? You

ain't seen nothin' yet.)

When a big oil spill happened in the Gulf earlier this month,

rightbloggers gathered more confidence, if not evidence, of Obama

malfeasance. "Obama's Weekly Address Ignores Oil Spill, Calls for

Campaign Finance Reform Instead," announced NewsBusters. "Talk about your Katrina moments..."

When Rush Limbaugh suggested that environmentalists may

have caused the spill via sabotage in order to pass the Cap and Trade

bill, rightbloggers rushed to support him. "Limbaugh mocked Obama's

dreadful response to the oil rig disaster yesterday," announced Gateway

Pundit's Jim Hoft. "Obama screwed up royally," said Frugal Cafe. "No Blaming Bush This Time!!!" yelled Oh Oh For Obama.

But they had trouble keeping their story straight. Some were outraged to

learn that Obama had accepted campaign money from BP, the oil company

behind the leak ("It looks like so many of the companies that have

caused America so much grief lately were all top donors to the Obama

campaign," said Another Black Conservative, without citing any of

the other grief-causing contributors). Others, conversely, claimed Obama

was persecuting BP in favor of his socialist agenda (Pundit & Pundette: "Thug-speak: 'We will keep

our boot on the throat of BP.'

This phrase was uttered by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar... this

hostile rhetoric is reserved for BP, who, by all accounts, is taking

responsibility for the disastrous accident and doing everything it can

to fix it").

As Media Matters noticed, a whole bunch of other

untoward events were labeled "Obama's Katrina" by the non-Liberal Media.

Yet nothing seemed to stick.

Then Nashville was hit. At first the situation might seem a poor

candidate for an Obama hit job. The death toll and property damage,

while tragic, did not even remotely approach the hundreds of deaths and the massive destruction and

displacement caused by Katrina in New Orleans. Also, the Obama

Administration has sent

high-level representatives to Tennesssee, and FEMA is about to send aid. (No Tea Party resistance

to this gummint encroachment has been noted -- "The moment arrived last

week," reported Nashville's City Paper, "when even Tennessee's most

ardent foes of big government welcomed help from Washington.")

But rightbloggers had been at bat a long while, and this time, no matter

how far out of the strike zone the pitch was, they were determined to

swing for the fences.

"Nashville Drowning: Obama's silent, HOPE crumbles like a Coke can,"

cried RedState. "Nashville Still Drowns While President

Obama Talks About The Phoenix Suns," said Liberty Pundits ("And, the press cheers"). Disrupt the Narrative whistled Dixie: "It's simple.

Barack Obama doesn't care about Southern people."

"Obama Golfs...While Nashville Drowns," cried Joshuapundit. "The news media -- the same people

that excoriated President Bush over Katrina -- has almost totally

ignored this story." To see how the media has ignored the story, scroll

through the hundreds of press citations here.

Joshuapundit added that Obama "hasn't even mentioned anything

about it," which is, unsurprisingly, not true.

As this and similar efforts showed signs of flailing, NewsBusters went for that tried and true

rightblogger favorite, the spiked story. "AP Story on 'Poor Appear

Harder Hit By Flooding In Tenn.' Disappears From Its Web Site; Why?"

they wrote. "The AP ran an article [about Nashville] whose purpose

seemed to be either to arouse class envy at a time when people should be

pulling together, or to criticize the state and federal relief effort's

priorities. That article is no longer present at AP's main web site."

Aha, caught the lie-berals scrubbing! Except the AP story had appeared

at 150 other subscriber sites. But not at AP's! Because "comments such

as those reported [in the story] bear an eerie resemblance to some of

the understandable but overheated rhetoric that came out of New Orleans

in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005," AP buried the story, allowing

only appearances in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Dallas

Morning News, "about a dozen CBS-affiliated outlets," and a

hundred other places. Mysterious are the ways of the Liberal Media!

Amazingly, waves of populist anger did not result from these bombshells.

It seemed the sheeple would never catch on.

So, inevitably, some of the brethren went duck-hunting where the ducks

were -- and by ducks, we mean white people.

"Why Does President Obama And The Media Hate White People?" asked

chiropractor Melissa Clouthier. She puckishly added, "Got your

attention, right? Just pretending to be a liberal for a moment." But her

commenters got the message: "The Muslim Terrorist in the white house

hasn't even mention Nashville... Yes, he definately hates white people

and Jews."

"Barack Obama Ignores Tennessee Flood Victims In Favor of Haiti and

Chile," said RedState. But Obama mentioned those tragedies when

he announced the National Day of Prayer -- a day before

Nashville was struck. So why was RedState even bringing them up? Think

of what Haitians look like, and of what Chileans look like, and then

think of what such prominent Nashvilleans as you would expect to see at

the Grand Ole Opry look like (forget Charley

Pride, he hasn't been there in years), and you'll get it.

David Horowitz's NewsReal headlined, "President Obama Doesn't Care

about White People?" The question mark is a puzzling touch, as author

David Forsmark's article left nothing in doubt:

Ooga Booga, America

"So now, an American city -- whose percentage of white citizens is

virtually the same as the percentage of black citizens in New Orleans'

was before the deluge -- is under water, and Barack Obama has not

uttered a word, much less visited, for a week.

"Interestingly, Taylor Swift donated $500,000 the other day to the

Nashville relief efforts. No word from Kanye..." In case any readers

were pop-culture-challenged and didn't get the color scheme of that

comment, NewsReal supplied a picture of Kanye West brutally seizing

Swift's spotlight at the Grammys.

Then there was Confederate Yankee. As you may imagine of someone

willing to adopt such a name, Confederate Yankee's opinions about the

relative support-worthiness of the people of Nashville and those of New

Orleans took on a certain coloration: The former, he said, "didn't cry

and wait for others to rescue them; they rescued themselves. They didn't

loot and riot and shoot at those trying to help them; they organized

and helped those most in need."

Conversely, "Years after Katrina," he said, "New Orleans will still be a

stinking cesspool of quitters and defeatists crying for handouts. Look

at the character of these two cities, and see if you can figure out why

one will thrive no matter the odds, and why one will fail no matter the

treasure wasted."

In an update, Confederate Yankee noted that liberals had "immediately

attacked this post as being -- sigh -- racist." Lord knows where they'd

get that idea.

If you wonder why these rightbloggers are prone to such appeals,

remember how they and their readers feel about the Liberal Media. They

believe that for decades it's been lying to the American people and

hypnotizing them with "false narratives," leading to the insufferable

situation in which they now find themselves.

Imagine them looking at their TV sets, the newspapers, and C-Span, and

seeing an ever-increasing number of black people in non-subservient

roles. From a certain perspective, it would be impossible to consider

this development to be a matter of merit, or even of changing taste --

it could only be the result of a nefarious, ongoing plot.

Now imagine them seeing white people in trouble and a black man in

charge. For such as they it would be like the climax of Birth of a

Nation unfolding in real life, but with the outcome in doubt -- and

the damn Liberal Media won't let them tell it like it is!

No wonder they look at Nashville's two dozen deaths and see a

Honkycaust. And if that seems crazy to the sheeple, well, what did they

expect? That's just what the media wants them to believe.

Roy

appears courtesy of our sister paper in New York City, Village Voice.