Clueless On Air America

Hi everyone. Salt bestowed upon me the honor of guest blogger while he is away for the holiday weekend. I am very pleased that he asked me and I will do my best for him.

This morning I ran across an appalling story that Randi Rhodes, a talk show host on Air America, is encouraging the looters in New Orleans:

In a broadcast yesterday, Air America radio talk radio host Randi Rhodes repeatedly urged listeners in the hurricane-devastated Gulf Coast to go out and loot, insisting the poor should be allowed to steal goods at will.

The leftist host, who has sparked controversy in the past for advocating the assassination of President Bush, said hurricane victims should avoid discount centers such as Wal-Mart and focus their looting on higher-end stores in order to get good quality products, according to Ned Rice, a contributor to National Review Online's weblog "The Corner."

How appalling. It's obvious that she's playing up the racial component of all this. But who are the real victims of the lawlessness that has overwhelmed New Orleans?

Power Line directs us to this compelling article by Nicole Gelinas entitled A Perfect Storm of Lawlessness:

But while the looters have reportedly killed police offers and have shot at rescue workers, they’re mainly victimizing, as usual, other poor blacks. The vicious looters aren’t the face of New Orleans’ poor blacks. Their victims are: the thousands of New Orleanians who made their way to shelter before the storm, and who rescued others and brought them to shelter during and after the storm—but who now cannot get the help they desperately need.

And what is one of the reasons help was delayed?

In truth, the looters, rapists, and murderers who have terrorized New Orleans since Monday began their post-Katrina reign of terror a full day before the situation grew truly desperate—and it was their increasingly lawless behavior that kept willing but unarmed professional and volunteer rescue workers away from the city and from the poor people who needed saving.

Randi Rhodes may believe that she is being funny. If so, she is a truly sick and disturbed person. Somebody should stick a pie in her big fat pie hole.