Cosmic Iguana - Voice of the Evil Doers

This Haiti thing has really got most bloggers' tits in wringer. Atrios [*], Calpundit [*] and a couple of others have admitted they don't know anything about Haiti. As the gangs of thugs moved their way through the cities of Haiti, most bloggers were silent. Even after Aristide was deposed, a lot of people didn't know what to make of it. When the rumors of a US Coup surfaced, Atrios didn't know what to make of it [*], and the Pandagon kids actually floated a conspiracy theory that Aristide was making it up [*] (But hey, at least they gave it a shot...).

Of course, no one knows what happened who wasn't in the room. It's also true that no one but OJ knows who killed Nicole. That being said, there are ways to make reasonable conjectures.

I am not saying that bloggers should be omniscient. I'm no Haiti expert. But I do remember Aristide being deposed before, and I remember Papa Doc, Baby Doc and Haitian refugees. And better than that, there is GOOGLE.

One reason why mainstream news is so bad is that reporters are lazy. They think the conventional wisdom is the last word, and they never do research. Bloggers, by contrast, try to be value-added. They add value by providing context. In a sense, they are not content providers, but context providers. Of course, when mainstream media ignores as much as it does, there is a need for more varied content as well.

The modern news/opinion cycle works in reverse these days. Bloggers pick up something, opinion writers pick it up from them, and finally news reporters get an OK from their editors to cover a story. The most famous example is the story of Trent Lott's speech at Strom's birthday party. When news like the unrest in Haiti begins, the public does not know the history or politics of Haiti enough to understand the meaning and Bush gets to play his game of being "shocked" when the US has been contributing to Aristide's destruction for years.

The United States has intervened in sovereign nations affairs in this hemisphere for nearly two hundred years, under the Monroe Doctrine which was designed to keep European powers out, but ended up keeping US power in. One particularly egregious extension of that was the Roosevelt Corollary (after Teddy) which allowed the US to intervene if a country simply became too indebted to foreign banks. By that token we should invade ourselves because of our debt to China.

The United States has made over 100 military actions in various countries in the last century or so, mostly in Latin America and the Carribean [*]. As Bill Maher once said, "If we did this kind of thing to the Arabs, they'd actually have the beef with us they think they do."

In short, if we could have done about Haiti what was done about Trent Lott, we might have affected the outcome before it was too late. Moral of the story: Use Google..... :O)