The Media Research Center continued to play the partisan blame game for the California wildfires. Erick Erickson made sure to blame people who weren’t white or straight for it in his Jan. 10 column:
Los Angeles set itself up for failure. In addition to dry fire hydrants, Los Angeles has a shortage of firefighters. Like the federal government, the city prioritized DEI over core competencies. Comedian Adam Carolla testified some time ago before a legislative hearing that the Los Angeles Fire Department told him it would take seven years to become a firefighter because he was white. Seven years after signing up to take the written test, he stood in line to take the test with a young black lady behind him. He testified he asked the young lady when she had signed up. “Wednesday,” she replied.
It is not just that Los Angeles chose to elevate diversity concerns over fully staffing a fire department, but it also fired competent firefighters who would not take the COVID vaccine. In 2022, Los Angeles officials made a very big deal of hiring the first female and first openly gay fire chief in county history. Last year, the Los Angeles County Commission cut the fire department budget by $17.6 million. But the fire department continued to spend over $1 million on a “racial equity plan” designed to “end systemic, institutional, and structural racism” within the fire department.
Curtis Houck devoted his own post that day to praising Erickson using a crude sexual metaphor:
Later, he gave it to us straight, down to the analogy of the liberal media being like someone’s personal prostitute housed in a sex dungeon: “Our republic needs a free press to hold power accountable. The press we have is not free. It is a ball-gagged gimp kept in the basement of the DNC trotted out to abuse anyone on the right who dares question progressive claims to power.”
Does that mean we can portray Houck and the rest of the MRC as Trump’s sex slaves who get trotted out to attack anyone who dares question Trump?
Brad Wilmouth whined in a Jan. 11 post that a “climate alarmist” was allowed to say things that didn’t conform to right-wing talking points:
On Thursday afternoon, MSNBC host Chris Jansing devoted a segment to letting climate alarmist Jeff Goodell blame the Los Angeles wildfires on human-caused global warming as the MSNBC host also promised more discussion of this topic in the near future.
Jansing invoked her guest’s book that fearmongers about global warming as she set up the discussion: “Joining me now, climate expert Jeff Goodell, author of the book, The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.”
After she asked for his reaction, Goodell began by admitting that California does have a history of substantial wildfires, but then claimed human use of fossil fuels has made such events worse:
[…]Jansing completely ignored the argument that there is no evidence that climate change is linked to wildfires as she wrapped up by asking him to return to her show in the near future when she can devote more time to his analysis.
The likely reason that argument as ignored is because it was advanced by a right-wing lobbying group who gets paid to ignore and deny climate change, while much evidence exists to link climate change to the wildfires.
Clay Waters whined that Trump’s false attacks were called out:
Friday’s edition of Washington Week with The Atlantic played defense for the Democratic Party in California over the raging wildfires that have destroyed tens of thousands of acres and thousands of houses, with one panelist in particular taking the time to chiding Trump and call Republicans liars for daring to point out the obvious failures of human response.
Moderator Jeffrey Goldberg was joined at the roundtable by among others, Laura Barrón-López, White House Correspondent for the PBS News Hour, who made the most of her time doing what she does on the News Hour, bashing Republicans and supporting Democrats.
Waters went on to defend blaming DEI policies:
Is it a “lie” to suggest DEI hiring was a factor in California’s failed wildfire response? An opinion, surely, and one partially supported by a notorious resurfaced video of the now-Deputy Fire Chief of Los Angeles, Kristine Larson, who said of rescuing a hypothetical man from a fire: “Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out.”
Newsweek noted Larson’s “role includes championing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.” Perhaps a little strength and compassion training would be in order for Larson.
Jorge Bonilla ranted that an NBC interview with Gov. Gavin Newsom didn’t go all Fox News on him:
The horrific California wildfires have left many stories in their terrifying wake: some heartbreaking, some inspirational, with many more to be told as the fires continue to burn. In addition to reporting these, the media seem bent on telling another story: that of Governor Gavin Newsom as a competent state executive completely in control and proactively responding to the fires.
After kicking off his rehab tour by sitting down with the Obama Bros, Newsom spoke to NBC’s Jacob Soboroff for Meet the Press. After initial pleasantries, the interview begins with questions on the fire itself but not deeply delving into the response.
[…]It is then that we go into the Trumpwashing portion of the interview, wherein some statement by President-Elect Donald Trump is made to be the actual scandal underlying the L.A. wildfires, as opposed to negligence under generations of Democrat rule.
[…]The interview then meanders into talk of the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the World Cup, and some nonspecific Marshall Plan. There were pro forma questions, for sure, about reservoirs but absolutely nothing about the concerns expressed by the L.A. Fire Chief. Both in tone and in style: this interview was an utter tongue bath, completely (D)ifferent from what a Republican would’ve garnered under similar circumstances.
Of course, if Newsom was a Republican, Bonilla would be demanding the tongue-bath treatment.
Waters huffed that that fact climate change is affecting California was brought up:
Alongside actual news about the awful wildfires plaguing Los Angeles, the front page of Sunday’s New York Times lead story slot featured more doomsaying environmental religion by the paper’s long-time true-believing environmental reporter David Gelles, along with the equally activist climate desk reporter Austyn Gaffney: “Fires in Los Angeles Area Are Grim Look Into Future – Warming Will Make Disasters Worse, Experts Say.”
(What would be do without “experts”?)
[…]Nothing was said about government incompetence in the famously liberal state. Meanwhile, the same press that has no problem fingering Republican officials for blame for natural disasters (see George W. Bush and Hurricane Katrina in 2005) huffed about Republicans doing the same for Democrats.
Waters cited no evidence that “government incompetence” is more of a problem than climate change, or that it actually existed here.
Then it was Alex Christy’s turn to complain about partisan Republicans trying to score points being called out:
Whatever one thinks of some Republicans suggesting aid to California after the devastating wildfires come with strings attached, it is hard to claim the state’s wildfire prevention strategy has been a success. Still, The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart took to the air on Comedy Central on Monday to mock GOP criticism by reducing forest management to raking leaves.
Stewart was not happy at the idea of conditions being applied to aid as he introduced a clip of GOP Rep. Warren Davidson on Fox, “Because red states are always the tragic victims of circumstance outside of their control, and Democrats always vote for their aid. Whereas blue state disasters are a function of their flawed morality and policy, and if we help blue state survivors, well, what message will that send? What lesson will they learn? But fine, if strings must be attached, what be the strings?”
In the clip, Davidson declared, “The problem with California is forestry management.”
Stewart followed by ridiculing the idea with an allusion to Keebler cookies, “Oh, yeah, sure, the management of the forests. You have to rake the leaves and shut down the illegal elf-tree-cookie factories.[“] […]
Stewart’s dismissal of brush clearance and how the lack of controlled burns has impacted California in recent times allowed him to get a cheap laugh at the expense of a serious discussion as he rolled right along with a clip of another GOP congressman, Byron Donalds, declaring, “They’ve not done the necessary work to make sure there’s fresh water flowing into key areas.”
[…]Stewart recapped by proclaiming, “But forest management, and get some water up here, and your children may have blankets! These are all great pointers on how to mitigate fires that I’m sure California has absolutely been trying. Water and forest management. Maybe not good enough, but they have it. There’s one thing you might not be considering, as you criticize them, and that’s this: I don’t know what kind of system you could develop that completely mitigates the risk of fire plus drought conditions plus 60-80 mile-per-hour winds plus delicious wood.”
Have winds exacerbated the current fires? Yes, but if the wind absolves California Democrats of all the blame, it also debunks The Daily Show’s own argument that the fires were caused by climate change.
Actually, not so much: It’s entirely likely that climate change played a role in making the Santa Ana winds more destructive.
Bill D’Agostino was trotted out to parrot the right-wing media-bashing line:
As catastrophic wildfires rage across southern California, the corporate liberal media are engaged in all of their nastiest habits at once in their coverage of the disaster. From fevered shrieking about climate change, to blind defense of inept Democratic officials, to obligatory fits of Trump-bashing, their reporting on of the California wildfires perfectly highlights everything that makes our leftist media so terrible.
As we’ve seen with how they cover hurricanes, they regard every environmental disaster imaginable as an opportunity to pontificate about climate change. During the January 8 edition of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, host Stephanie Ruhle announced: “Wildfires raging in L.A. are highlighting the risk of climate change — yes, climate change!”
That same evening, CBS anchor Lindsey Reiser claimed on the network’s streaming service: “The wildfires in California are the latest in a string of natural disaster made worse by climate change.”
D’Agostino also blamed non-white people:
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appointed a Fire Chief who is significantly more interested in DEI than she is in anything to do with fire prevention or suppression. The Federalist’s Beth Brelje recently went through the LAFD’s strategic plan, where she found some woefully misplaced priorities: “[T]ogether, the words ‘diverse’ and ‘diversity’ appear 16 times; the word ‘water’ appears just twice, and the word ‘hydrant’ does not appear at all.”
That might be because water lines and hydrants already exist in presumed abundance, and there was no need at the time to add more.