-By Warner Todd Huston
On November 16, CBS News aired a segment full of praise for President Obama’s visit to Staten Island in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. But this positive spin is in stark contrast to the scolding the network gave President Bush when he visited the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005..
In the report on CBS This Morning, correspondent Elaine Quijano favorably included Obama in her report on Sandy storm damage showing the President shaking hands with big smiles all around, pledging government support for the victims, and hugging and meeting with individual storm survivors. Mr. Obama was shown as a sympathetic figure ready to help — quite despite that the business of setting the area aright has gone on for weeks without as much progress as residents have hoped.
But this favorable treatment for Obama stands in stark contrast to the attacks CBS leveled against President Bush when he went to visit storm ravaged areas after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.
Matt Hardo reminds us that in 2005 CBS ravaged President Bush for having had a press conference in an air-conditioned tent as victims went without and pointedly said that residents wanted Bush to “wake up and smell the coffee.”
CBS’ Harry Smith even wondered if religious folks that came to help might become unbearable Bible thumpers forcing poor victims to “go to church.”
CBS News’s Harry Smith showed his silly concern over churches welcoming Katrina refugees. “Do I need to be concerned that I’m going to go live with a church family, are they going to proselytize me, are they going to say, ‘You better come to church with me or else, I’m, you know, you’re not going to get your breakfast this morning?'” he posed to Pastor Rick Warren.
CBS spent weeks attacking George W. Bush for his response to Katrina. You’ll also recall that the storm was used as another excuse for race-baiting by the whole of the Old Media.
But this time, our President is presented as a hero. I wonder what has changed?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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