The transformation of the mainstream American media has been astonishing when it comes to blaming presidential administrations for natural disasters and criticizing response to them.  After eight years of blaming George W. Bush and his administration for everything from the year 2000

blackout in New York to the annual wildfires and mudslides in California and the hurricane called Katrina, a post January 2009 mainstream media has seemed to suddenly shift all blame for such occurrences to everything except the current president and his administration.    

After the botched responses to the Haitian Earthquake and most recently to the winter 2010 flooding in New England, the Obama Administration is now reeling after a full eight-day delay in its response to the oil platform explosion and ensuing spill in the Gulf of Mexico and again with their fumbling of the recent terror attempt in New York City’s Time Square.  Harkening back to The Planet Buzz’s article “Rubber Bracelets”, it seems instead of the media adhering to the principle, “what would we do if Obama was Bush?”, the media has instead taken the tact, “Do the opposite for Obama of what we did for Bush”.

The media has gone as far as create excuses for Obama’s eight-day delay in addressing the Gulf Oil Spill, stating that British Petroleum (BP) lied to the Obama Administration concerning the extent of the spill, despite the fact the entire country knew the extent of the damage through media reports.  Compare this to the fact it was the media itself, due to an Associated Press article by Adam Nossiter on August 29, 2005 that was featured on the front page of every U.S. paper that morning, which stated New Orleans was spared as the hurricane passed well east.  Despite this, the U.S. Coast Guard was on the scene immediately, the National Guard was dispatched the next day to distribute relief supplies and maintain security and President Bush personally toured the area in a helicopter two days later.   After being deceived by media reports that lead them to stage at the point of Katrina’s landfall in eastern Louisiana and neighboring Mississippi, FEMA was still able to redirect assets to New Orleans within a few days.  Moreover, the media criticized President Bush’s flyover of the New Orleans disaster area in a helicopter at 500 feet, but in April 2010 when President Obama overflew the New England disaster areas in Air Force One at 39,000 feet on his way to a political fundraiser in Portland Maine, the media was silent.  President Obama never toured the hardest hit areas of New England, Connecticut and Rhode Island, in the wake of the flood devastation but instead attended fundraisers in Boston, MA and Portland, ME, while New England Democrats covered for his absence and lack of leadership.  Nor did rapper Kanye West spew the hateful accusation that “Obama hates black people” as he said of President Bush in the wake of Katrina.

Now the Obama administration has displayed utter incompetence in their response to the oil spill in the Gulf.  The president did not tour the area until eight days after the disaster, and the lead agency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), took twelve days to respond and post anything on their website, while one must turn to alternative media and foreign news outlets to find the extent to which the president and his EPA administrator fiddled while the Gulf burned.

Obama joking, see here

Obama waited too long, see here 

The Obama Administration’s botched response to the recent attempted act of terrorism on Times Square was equally lame, with the head of Homeland Security looking like a deer in the headlights during questioning on the issue, obviously unfamiliar with not only the facts of the case, but with what was occurring around her to find the perpetrator.  After being told the perpetrator was a lone wolf white male, we now find it was a Pakistani naturalized citizen who should have been on the terror watch list and may have acted as part of a larger terrorist network.

On his inauguration day, Obama ripped former President Bush by promising never to have a repeat of “Katrina”.  President Obama’s inexperience and incompetence has manifested itself in every disaster that has occurred since his taking office, from natural disasters to terrorist events, greatly exceeding the manufactured mainstream media narratives on Katrina.   It seems what President Obama really meant to promise during his inauguration is that there would never be a repeat of the media coverage “Katrina” received as it relates to his administration.  In that regard, with the firm support of his mainstream media allies, it is apparently one of the few promises President Obama will be able to keep.