The Weather, U.S. Politics and the Lord

The News & Advance
Published: September 2, 2008

What is it about disasters that bring out the stupid in so many people? And at the same time, spotlights the hypocrisy so rampant in the upper echelons of American politics and culture.

Sixteen years ago, televangelist Pat Robertson got in hot water — one of many times — when he implied God had sent Hurricane Andrew to batter south Florida for that area’s “wicked,” hedonistic lifestyle. In the days following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the late Jerry Falwell Sr. found himself at the center of a storm when he said the attacks were the fault of a liberal culture: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘You helped this happen.’”

Video of both men inserting their feet into their mouths seemed to be on constant replay in the national media in the days after their gaffes. Both Falwell and Robertson were rightly excoriated for their remarks and their insensitivity. Americans, in general, don’t like anyone trying to score political points off a tragedy.

But you know what, it’s a little different when it’s a liberal Democrat essentially doing the same thing. Just consider the recent bombastes from liberal propogandist/filmmaker Michael Moore and former Democratic National Committee chairman Don Fowler.

In the days leading up the opening of the 2008 Republican National Convention on Monday in St. Paul, Hurricane Gustav was churning through the Caribbean Sea toward the Gulf of Mexico, taking aim at New Orleans almost three years to the day Hurricane Katrina hit the Crescent City.

Sen. John McCain and his advisers basically scrapped the convention’s first day of business, not wanting the nation to see a split television screen of New Orleans getting hammered paired with partying GOP convention delegates. Especially not in the wake of the disasterous response of the Bush administration to Katrina, a disaster that continues to this day.

McCain quite rightly told his party to take off its party hat and don its American hat, as hundreds of thousands of Louisianans fled the massive storm.

Here’s where Moore and Fowler and their massive mouths come into play.

Moore, whose mouth is as big as his girth is wide, was a guest on MSNBC and made the pithy observation that “Gustav is proof that there is a God in Heaven,” as Republicans were scrambling to reconfigure their convention. Fowler, a Democrat superdelegate, was caught on tape saying Gustav’s projected landfall Monday “just demonstrates God is on our side.”

Where was the outrage and indignation over Fowler’s and Moore’s remarks? Where were the editorials in The New York Times and like-minded publications demanding immediate apologies and recantations? Where were the talking heads and cable pundits like Keith Olbermann demanding a pound of flesh in punishment? (Oops, it was Olbermann’s MSNBC show on which Moore let loose with his little zinger, Olbermann was yukking it up with the best of them.)

Yet again, we’ve seen more evidence — as if we needed any more — of the cultural, social and political gulfs between the elites in our society and the great majority of this nation.

No political party, no political ideology has a lock on hypocrisy and stupidity. Just ask Messrs. Moore and Fowler.