The 2017 hurricane season has already seen a few historically powerful cyclones materialize and churn unencumbered across warm waters conducive to rapid intensification. That it is still only September is a sobering reminder of the potential for even more weather catastrophes in the coming weeks.
Similarly, yet much less surprisingly, the liberal media has ramped up its gross distortion of truth each time a conservative pundit, of which there are regrettably few, dares to throw a counter-punch. The liberal counter to the counter-punch is always much more ferocious and capitalizes on a political climate that rarely, if ever, bothers to notice or question the blatant falsification of facts.The latest instance comes via comments made by conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.
Last Tuesday on his program, Limbaugh argued that the way the liberal media covers hurricanes is yet another calculated effort designed to stoke fear and crystallize in hearts and minds the totally baseless notion that climate change is responsible for the uptick in cyclone formation. Like other issues that should be entirely nonpartisan, Limbaugh noted that the left’s hurricane fear mongering, “accompanied by talk that climate change is causing hurricanes to become more frequent and bigger and more dangerous,” arrests people’s ability to think independently and breeds intellectual homogenization.
In short, he’s right. Concerning the supposed hurricane-climate change correlation, one does not need to engage complex and at best theoretical numbers. Rather, consider one number and one number only. Twelve. Prior to Hurricane Harvey making landfall on the Texas coast, it had been twelve years since a major hurricane had hit the United States. Such an interlude suggests that hurricanes are cyclical and not exponential as the leftist climate frauds would have you believe. I find it remarkable how the simplest of points are often the most compelling. Carry on.
THE LANGUAGE OF FEAR HAS ESCALATED
Concerning Limbaugh’s contention that hurricane coverage deliberately amplifies fear, corroboration is equally simple. Just turn on the television and tune in to the liberal news
monopoly. Even when Hurricane Irma remained far out in the tropical Atlantic and posed no imminent threat to land, the 24-hour coverage began en masse as if the storm was about to hit. Now that Irma is about to make landfall on the Florida peninsula, media theatrics have escalated. From the language employed – the eye of a monster, tracking a monster; etc. – to background music, coverage is tailored to foment panic, not foster composure. My personal favorite is the foreboding tune The Weather Channel plays after returning from break.
With a level of obtuseness that typifies liberal counter arguments, the media has responded to Limbaugh by claiming that he is lambasting hurricanes. According to Miami Herald writer Leonard Pitts Jr., Limbaugh “said that hurricanes are part of a vast liberal plot.” Pitts Jr. is certainly not alone. He’s just one of many liberal pundits in a chorus of stupidity. Forbes ran an incredibly misleading headline that reads “Rush Limbaugh, Fake News, and Hurricane Irma.”[1]
CONCERN OR DRAMA?
While such rebuttals are outrageous in light of what Limbaugh actually said, it’s important to temper our expectations of the media. Liberal news pundits have never been known for keen differentiation, and their cognitive faculties have been especially blunt during the Trump era. Why would we expect them, then, to distinguish between calling a hurricane itself conspiratorial and calling the coverage of the hurricane conspiratorial?
Hurricane Irma is a big deal. Hurricane Harvey was a big deal, and the aftermath has been an equally big deal. Devastation associated with these storms is something to be treated with due concern. But there is a fine line between due concern and unwarranted drama. These natural disasters, while terrible, should afford people an opportunity to divorce their minds from the inundation of liberal politicization and feel unified by a common threat. In this day and age, however, I suppose that would be too much to ask.
[1] Leonard Pitts Jr., “Hurricanes are not a liberal conspiracy, trust me on this one,” The Miami Herald, Sept. 9, 2017; Chris Ladd, “Rush Limbaugh, Fake News, and Hurricane Irma,” Forbes Magazine, Sept. 9, 2017.
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