The Empire 489

The Scum of the Earth

Sunday 17 January 2010

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: ChuckHolton, roberthuffstutter, PhillipC)

Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, GOP luminaries Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh have once again waded into a catastrophic tragedy with all the care and concern of hammerhead sharks unleashed into a fish tank full of orphans. For those not yet in the know, the dynamic global response in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti was accompanied by comments from Robertson and Limbaugh that would be unutterably sickening if they were not so completely predictable. To wit:

"I have been to Haiti way, way back a long time ago when it was a cruise ship stop, Port Au Prince, and I've seen pictures of Haiti. It is a devastatingly poor place. Nothing has ever changed, and right across the mountain ridge in the middle you've got the Dominican Republic, which is like night and day. It's like night and day. What is the one common factor. That place, Haiti, has been run by dictators and communists. How long is it going to be, how long is it going to be, before we hear Obama and the Left in this country say that what we really need to do is reinstate the communist Aristide to the leadership position down there, to coordinate putting the country back together. The Haitian economy is entirely dependent on foreign aid. They produce nothing, zilch, zero, nada, and it's been that way for the longest time."

- Rush Limbaugh

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other. Desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It's cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti; on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, et cetera. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God."

- Pat Robertson

It is well-nigh impossible to decipher what Limbaugh spewed on Haiti. It is perfect gibberish: he's seen pictures, the place is poor, Aristide is a communist, and the country produces nothing (except Disney merchandise, a fact Rush left off). Coherent? Hardly. Hateful? You tell me. Robertson, however, managed to fully outstrip Limbaugh on the verbal dementia scale by alleging a Haitian pact with Satan is the reason for the earthquake, despite the fact that Haiti is 85 percent Catholic.

Press play to listen to author William Rivers Pitt read his column, "The Scum of the Earth":

It would be easy enough to roll our eyes and dismiss the latest budget of verbal nonsense from these two with an oh-here-we-go-again shrug. After all, we've all been here before.

"I tell people, don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for."

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/the-scum-earth56138