The subtle dishonesty of a liberal journalist

Early in a piece by Gerard Baker of the London Times about his visit to the ruins of New Orleans, I come upon this:

Perhaps this is an early glimpse of the post-American era that some pundits predict, a hint of what Soviet military planners and now al-Qaeda fanatics have long plotted. But the architects of this city’s demise were nature, neglect and inhumanity.

Now I ask you, when hearing that “inhumanity” was an architect of New Orleans’ demise, what would 99 out of 100 readers assume Baker was referring to? To the supposed racist indifference of President Bush and white America toward New Orleans’ poor black residents, right? In fact, the article has not a word to say about that subject. What then is the inhumanity of which Baker speaks? The only reference to inhumanity comes halfway through the long article:

Here another tragic irony unfolded as many of those who had been rescued from their submerged homes were dumped and left to die from dehydration and disease; some, it seems were even murdered and their mutilated bodies left inside.

Is he suggesting that people were deliberately or even negligently left to die? I’ve seen no reports like that, only that the rescue operation was overwhelmed by the total situation. So the only verified inhumanity here (and it had nothing to do with the demise of the city, but with the demise of an unknown, probably small number of murder victims) is that of murderers, who, by the way, were all black murderers.

Baker is thus playing a devious and dishonorable game. Through his unspecified reference to “inhumanity” he feeds his liberal readers’ prejudiced belief that there is this vast white racism that is responsible for … well, you know, for the fact that 100,000 black people in New Orleans didn’t own cars, and for the fact that they were sent by their black mayor to a sports stadium without food and water, when, in reality, Baker has not not a single piece of evidence showing white racism or wrongful indifference to the poor, or even a phony charge to that effect.

The criticism I’ve made here may seem trivial. But it is through both small and big lies, ubiquitously applied, that liberals maintain and enforce their evil world view.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 09, 2005 07:58 PM | Send