After the beheading of Nick Berg, I found the partisan response of the blogosphere to a beheading quite interesting. Long story short, conservative blogs were all over the story, liberals not so much…
Fast-forward to the Tsunami– a story that should be nearly devoid of partisan bias. I decided to check the same blogs…
The Lefty Blogs
Crooked Timber has exactly one post of just 4 lines on the Tsunami itself and a follow-up post about red cross donations.
Over at Washington Monthly there was one post from a guest poster. Kevin Drum was apparently too busy to mention 60,000 or so people dead but he did find time to call George Bush a criminal and post about the fact that the label in his new shirt doesn’t itch him. Nothing like priorities in life.
Matthew Yglesias, to his credit, has 3 posts.
Josh Marshall? That would be one post.
Atrios had a single post where he called it “Horrible” and said he had nothing to add. But he did find time later to blame the U.S for being stingy
Daily Kos has 2 posts, neither from Kos. I can’t help but wonder what he’d say about these victims.
MYDD – the new big dog in the liberal half of the blogosphere- could not be bothered to even mention 60,000 people dead.
The Righty Blogs
LGF has 5 posts that I saw and I might have missed some.
Michele at A Small Victory, is all over it, dozens of posts if you count CP, many for charitable donations.
Outsidethebeltway has 3 posts on the topic.
Glenn Reynolds has 10 posts (that I saw) up with multiple updates/links.
(Vodkapundit is on a hiatus of some sort, so subbing for Steven Green will be Steven Taylor)
Steven Taylor is at 3 posts and a cool map.
Wizbang is at 9 and counting.
AND what the heck, since I got both sides, I’ll get Joe over at “The Moderate Voice.” Joe has 7 posts (that I saw) including the mother of all round-ups.
To be fair, things have changed in the blogosphere. I listed Andrew Sullivan as a righty blogger before, but I don’t know he qualifies for that label toady. I didn’t have a “gay marriage blog” category so I dumped him. The lefty blogs (and readers) have cemented around a few big names in these last few months while there are a ton of new righty blogs. Many of the new “righty” blogs had few posts on the topic.
Still I have to wonder… We are continually told how much more liberals care about their fellow man than conservatives, yet 60,000 people are presumed dead and many of the liberals hardly mention it…
The numbers don’t seem to tell the same story.
yhbt! yhl! hand! ror! nt!
“AND the pure bean counting DOES say something. It shows the level of interest the respective blogger has.”
No, not “level of interest.” Level of bloodthirsty Armageddon interest.
The liberal blogs posted their anguished cries of disbelief and IMMEDIATELY posted links to international aid sites. What more did they need to do? Post horrible pictures of the drowned, bloated, bruised bodies? Make tacky statements? I think not.
i’m laughing so hard.. i cry.
pure evil. stand down. give up the blog posting and do something constructive.
donate $.
compell your Gov’t to do more.
go man the Red Cross donation phone lines.
and make sure you shut the f*ck up and don’t say a word of what you’re doing. there is no need to gloat and publically pat youself on the back.
now get to it!
From a Small Victory –
“All you people – from both sides of the political alley – who are using the disaster in Asia as a springboard to frothing at the mouth about people/politicians/religions/organizations you hate – are big, giant, fucking assholes.”
Don’t bother to defend it – move on, and do something to inspire others, rather than try to tear them down.
Your motives may have been noble, but you’ve ignored a lot of good people when you started keeping score over the dead.
Sorry, guys, but this is one of the most insulting and ridiculous blog posts I’ve ever come across.
Yes, gawking at a road accident is always a great indicator of compassion. And those people who drive on by, but actually concern themselves with doing things, ridiculed by the gawkers as expensive and statist, to prevent such accidents in the future, are heartless brutes.
The right is talking about this more because this has shattered everything for the right. How could God do something like this?! At Christmas?! How could the UN be out dealing with the tragedy, saving lives and starting reconstruction, whilst the US dithers?! How could the government departments and NGOs be the only hope, why isn’t their a big corporation that could make this disaster all better and turn a profit at the same time?! Curse you, reality, why have you failed conservatism again?!
The left is just getting on with it, raising cash, volunteering, supporting, doing the neccessary. People are suffering all over the world every day, and the left is always trying to help. The scale is unprecedented, but the left know these people aren’t the first people in history to be suffering. The left has been dealing with tragedies like this, day-in day-out, for generations. It takes something this big for right-wingers to notice the world around them, to realise not everyone lives on cloud nine – like it took 9/11 for the right to notice that their old allies, the Taleban, were evil, while the left had been working to help the oppressed in Afghanistan for a decade before that.
So the right gawks, tries to find an emotive story, a victim to “identify” with, wrings its hands and sheds a few false tears. And the left deals with the tragedy and starts to re-build.
Things don’t change. Right and left don’t change. Right-wingers will always be self-obsessed creeps. Left-wingers will awlays be compulsive heroes. Right-wingers will always have their ivory towers and their servants. Left-wingers will always have their knees dirty and their sleeves rolled-up. At the end of the day, left-wingers are good and build stuff, right-wingers are evil and ruin stuff. It’s always been like that. Blogging isn’t going to change it.