The 'Good Side' to the SoCal Inferno

Family of America-hating pâté eaters gets their just desserts

Looking at the pictures on TV of the raging wildfires in California, which have led to the evacuation of 500,000 people and the loss of thousands of homes, it would all be so depressing if this natural disaster were a bad thing. But it turns out that there has been a plus side to the fires. For one thing, many evacuees are enjoying gourmet meals and massages. And as CNN's Glenn Beck pointed out on his radio show, some of the victims of the fires actually got what was coming to them. "I think there is a handful of people who hate America," Beck said. "Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today." So while the wildfires raging near San Diego might seem like an unmitigated disaster on first glance, they actually aren't all bad.

Of course, Beck was not saying that all of the people who lost their homes in the fires hate America. Only some of them. As Jammie Wearing Fool points out (linked with approval by Glenn Reynolds), "It's Beck's opinion that some who hate America live in that area. Is this even debatable?" Of course not. The rest of the people who lost their homes are what we might call collateral damage. Fire is a very imprecise method of punishing people but a very effective one. Although Beck didn't mention the people who don't hate America who lost their homes, I'm sure he feels bad for them and wishes there were another way of giving the people who do hate America what they deserve. . . .

There is so much negativity in politics these days that it is refreshing to have someone like Beck to show us the silver lining in every cloud. I'm glad that CNN, which always seems to focus on the bad news, has given Beck a relentlessly upbeat daily platform to show the other side. A day without Beck would be like a day without sunshine.

-- JON SWIFT

Photograph by Robert Durrell/Los Angeles Times