The recent wildfires that raged across Southern California are of particular interest to me. As a resident of Los Angeles, a graduate of Rancho Bernardo High School in San Diego, and the son of wildfire evacuees, this story touches very close to home. That is why I find it so abhorrent when politicians and media figures use the fires as a springboard to advance extreme right-wing claims. Certainly no one is suggesting that the Right should not be allowed a forum for free speech, only that, considering the 1,500 homes destroyed, 500,000 acres burned, and 950,000 people evacuated, a more opportune time certainly would have presented itself. And considering how outlandish some of these far right claims are, perhaps they should be permanently bottled up.
The first perpetrator of this nonsense was none other than Fox News. On October 24th, the Fox & Friends morning program (shown above) reported an alleged link between al-Qaeda and the wildfires. (video here)
The alleged "link" turned out to be a 4-year old FBI memo, detailing a purported al-Qaeda plot to start wildfires in several Western U.S. states. The plot was suggested by an alleged al-Qaeda detainee, and California was not one of the states mentioned. And while the the exact cause of all the fires is not yet known, the evidence is not at all hinting at any kind of coordinated effort. Thus far, fires have been attributed to fallen power lines, an overturned semi-truck, a boy playing with matches and arson. So, what we really have here is not a concerted effort on the part of an international terrorist organization to kill Americans, but a concerted effort on the part of a national news organization to frighten Americans. What makes Fox's "reporting" so heinous is the fact that suggesting al-Qaeda involvement in a natural disaster is pure, unadulterated propaganda. If the White House had chosen, I don't know...Belgium instead of al-Qaeda as the medium by which to scare Americans into relinquishing their civil liberties, taking on massive national debt, and watching soldiers come home from battle dead or wounded, then Fox News would be telling us Belgium was responsible for the California wildfires.
Conservative blogger/columnist Michelle Malkin, appearing on Fox News, blamed the wildfires on illegal immigrants. (video here) Discussing with Neil Cavuto the possibility of one of the fires being started by a Central American immigrant, Malkin stated :
Of course, massive, uncontrolled immigration touches every aspect of life, particularly in Southern California. So whether you're in an emergency situation like they are now with the wildfires, or in regular everyday life, illegal immigration and massive, uncontrolled immigration has an impact....It's enough to deal with the problems that are "native born" in Southern California without having to import more headaches.
Just a couple of problems with Malkin's analysis:
1. The immigrant suspect in question was in fact in the United States legally.
2. Michelle Malkin is, herself the daughter of legal immigrants
3. Nowhere in her anti-immigrant rant does Malkin actually explain what immigration has to do with the forest fires.
With no evidence tying the California wildfires to illegal immigration, it is clear that Fox News and Michelle Malkin were simply exploiting a terrible situation to advance their own xenophobic agenda.
1. The immigrant suspect in question was in fact in the United States legally.
2. Michelle Malkin is, herself the daughter of legal immigrants
3. Nowhere in her anti-immigrant rant does Malkin actually explain what immigration has to do with the forest fires.
With no evidence tying the California wildfires to illegal immigration, it is clear that Fox News and Michelle Malkin were simply exploiting a terrible situation to advance their own xenophobic agenda.
But by far the most despicable example of the politicization of the California wildfires is Conservative TV and radio host Glenn Beck. The smug, ill-informed, and almost comically un-funny Beck has long had some ethereal disdain for all things liberal. I'm actually surprised that this is the first time Beck's mug has graced the pages of my blog, as he is as agenda-driven a water-carrier as any that exist among the GOP's media enterprise.On the October 22nd edition of The Glenn Beck Program, Beck took a cheap shot at the fire victims. Tastelessly tacked on to the end of a pro-war, anti-healthcare, anti-education rant, Beck added:
We all love America. We just disagree on how we should function, what we should do, big government, small government. It doesn't mean you hate America. I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today.
I could maybe ignore yet another refrain of the conservative mantra that "all liberals hate America." Perhaps I could overlook the fact that among the wealthy San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, and San Bernadino County residents effected by the fires, liberals are likely a small minority. If Beck intended his liberal-bashing "joke" (as he later described it) to be aimed at Hollywood, well, he missed. What makes Beck a poor American (and a lousy comedian) can be summed up in one word: timing. It's probably not the best idea in the world to use fire victims as a punchline to some lame effort to smear Hollywood liberals. And it's definitely not a good idea to question one's status as a model American, while in the same breath mocking your fellow American for having his/her home burned to the ground.
If this episode of political "hitting below the belt" weren't enough, Beck later took a swipe at environmentalists. Beck has long been in the 10-15% of Americans that comprise the global warming skeptics. I guess "skeptic" is a nice way of putting it. The word "skeptic" implies that there is some lack of empirical evidence preventing one from embracing a widely held belief. Evidence like, I don't know...melting polar icecaps, more frequent and destructive hurricanes, devastating forest fires! So call him what you will, but Beck's stance on the environment is basically as far right as possible, just shy of actually going out and burning down trees and slaughtering bunnies. I think Beck may actually HATE rainforests.
So Beck's comments from the October 23rd broadcast of his cable TV program on Headline News should really come as no surprise. With assistance from R.J. Smith, environmental analyst from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a Right-wing, oil-funded think tank, Beck claimed that environmentalists were actually to blame for the California wildfires:
...[T]he environmentalists, the same ones that going to tell me it’s my fault because I have an SUV, these same damn environmentalists are the ones that have stopped people in California from clearing brush on their own property.
Beck has apparently conflated liberal opposition to deforestation with opposition to property owners clearing brush near their homes. With Beck, it's almost as if the more ridiculous the claim (i.e., environmentalism creates forest fires), the more likely he is to advance it. Of course, no green-bashing orgy would be complete without an assault on global warming theories. To do this, Beck, in the same segment, also employed another CEI fellow, Chris Horner, to downplay global warming as a factor in the fires. In a bizarre menage a trois, cleverly disguised as some kind of debate, the anti-environmentalist Beck and the two Big Oil think-tankers put the blame for the California wildfires squarely on the shoulders of the greens. It really is a must watch. Beck introduces his two guests as if they were two polar opposites, ready to square off in a heated debate, when in fact Horner and Smith likely have adjoining offices at CEI.
So in summation, we can clearly see that anytime is a good time to advance the conservative agenda. What makes the talking heads even more disingenuous in this case, is not so much the inappropriate timing of it; From Jerry Falwell's post 9/11 comments to Barbara Bush's post-Katrina remarks, we have come to expect national disasters to be a green light for conservatives to launch into anti-liberal tirades. The insincerity in the California fire comments stems from the fact that, in each case, the media figures in question did not offer any unique political perspective on the fires, but simply echoed their own previous ideologies, disguised (with the exception of Glenn Beck) as concern for the fire victims. Fox News traditionally likes to ramp up fears about Islamic terrorist organizations. Michelle Malkin is a noted opponent of almost all forms of immigration. Glenn Beck is perhaps the leading champion of the global warming deniers movement.
I guess that those on the left don't really expect conservatives to stop making ridiculous statements. We just hope they might better pick their moments, so as not to make it seem as though they are exploiting disaster victims for their own political benefit.
So in summation, we can clearly see that anytime is a good time to advance the conservative agenda. What makes the talking heads even more disingenuous in this case, is not so much the inappropriate timing of it; From Jerry Falwell's post 9/11 comments to Barbara Bush's post-Katrina remarks, we have come to expect national disasters to be a green light for conservatives to launch into anti-liberal tirades. The insincerity in the California fire comments stems from the fact that, in each case, the media figures in question did not offer any unique political perspective on the fires, but simply echoed their own previous ideologies, disguised (with the exception of Glenn Beck) as concern for the fire victims. Fox News traditionally likes to ramp up fears about Islamic terrorist organizations. Michelle Malkin is a noted opponent of almost all forms of immigration. Glenn Beck is perhaps the leading champion of the global warming deniers movement.
I guess that those on the left don't really expect conservatives to stop making ridiculous statements. We just hope they might better pick their moments, so as not to make it seem as though they are exploiting disaster victims for their own political benefit.
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