Washington Post editorialist Lee Hockstader wrote a puff profile on Haiti's thuggish President-elect Michel Martelly ("Haiti's 'Sweet Micky' Martelly Turns Presidential," 4/24/11), whom he depicts as

a fresh, vital force on the political scene, bringing with him energy and a new (mostly untested) crop of advisers, unbeholden to any recent political establishment. Little wonder that in the runoff election, Martelly, who is 50, beat a professorial 70-year-old former first lady 2 to 1.

How can you write about Martelly's run-off "victory" without noting that both rounds of the election had historically low turnout--not just for Haiti, but for the Western Hemisphere? According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (4/5/11), which follows Haiti closely, Martelly "won only 4.6 percent of the electorate in the first round and 16.7 percent in the second round." There is indeed "little wonder" that even a candidate with ties to the bloody Duvalier dictatorship who promises to restore the hated Haitian army can get that much support.

Speaking of Duvalier, Hockstader includes the usual spurious equation of the dictator with twice-deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, calling both "divisive former presidents who have recently returned to Haiti from exile and who might face prosecution." In the most recent election he was allowed to participate in, Aristide got 92 percent of the vote with a 68 percent turnout. So who's really the "divisive" president?
UPDATE: The Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an intergovernmental organization, calculated the turnout for the 2000 election at 78 percent, which may be a more accurate number.

Amy Wilentz has a strong critique of the media in her column in the new issue of the Nation (2/8/10).  Starting with the New York Times' David Brooks (1/15/10; see FAIR Blog, 1/15/10), she demolishes his facile comparison of Haiti and Barbados ("Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well") and then moves on:

Brooks goes on to discuss the Haitian family, seemingly basing his argument on a book by Lawrence Harrison, a conservative cultural critic who also knows nothing about Haiti. "Child-rearing practices" in Haiti, Brooks writes, "often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10." I don't know where this assertion comes from, but it reminds me of nothing so much as Daniel Patrick Moynihan's controversial and misguided report on the black family in the 1960s. I've never seen either of these child-rearing practices in my two decades of living in and covering Haiti. In fact, I see more parents carrying small children around in Haiti's markets than I do at the farmers' markets in Los Angeles. You can't write these kinds of things about people whose culture and nation you respect. Nor would an editor permit you to say such things blithely about people who are considered our equals or are able to respond in equally august publications. Right now, the Haitians cannot--they're too busy getting water for their neglected children.

Wilentz then turns to the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum (1/18/10):

She opens her piece (as she so often does) by telling us about herself; her reactions are important to her: "For the past several days, I have found myself unable to look at the photographs from Haiti. I have also found that when I start an article datelined Port-au-Prince, I have to force myself to read to the end." Although she doesn't like to read about it, she knows what's at the heart of her reluctance: "I have no illusions about anyone's ability to help, for this...is a man-made disaster first and foremost, and so it will remain." She goes on to fault the weakness of Haiti's public institutions for the physical collapse of buildings, including the Presidential Palace (constructed by the Marines during the 1915-34 U.S. occupation of Haiti) and many other public edifices built by perfectly well-educated architects using the best practices of their day. It's a stunningly heartless argument.

I'm tempted to quote much more, but that's what links are for.

While many are opening their hearts and purses to Haiti's suffering, it’s important to note the corporate media's high profile exceptions. Televangelist Pat Robertson, carried on Disney's Family Channel, suggested Haiti invited the disaster by making a deal with the devil 200 years ago (FAIR Blog, 1/14/09). Radio big Rush Limbaugh discouraged donating to Haiti disaster relief on his January 13 show, saying:  "We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax.... You just can’t keep throwing money at it." Meanwhile, Fox's Bill O'Reilly and New York Times columnist David Brooks each presented nauseatingly patronizing prescriptions for Haiti’s rehabilitation.

On his January 13 show, O'Reilly said the way to cure Haiti's economic and social problems was to impose discipline on Haitians:

My travels there have been illuminating. Only half the population can read and write. Unemployment's more than 50 percent. Most Haitians live on less than $2 a day. No matter how much charity is given, no matter how many good intentions there are, Haiti will remain chaotic until discipline is imposed.

In his January 15 Times column, David Brooks offered his prescription: To "fix"  their "progress-resistant culture," Haiti needs to develop "No Excuses countercultures," and turn to paternalism:

It's time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.

But according to the human rights group MADRE,  the U.S. has already tried that:

Ironically, Brooks' prescription of "intrusive paternalism" to "fix the culture," aptly sums up U.S. policy towards Haiti for the past 100 years: a brutal military occupation from 1915 to 1934; support for dictatorship from 1957 to 1986; and, more recently, the imposition of trade policies that have further impoverished people. What the outside world needs to "fix" is not Haitian culture, but its own self-serving policies that have left thousands of Haitians literally buried alive.

Bill Fletcher, executive editor of Black Commentator, had more to say on this subject on the latest edition of FAIR's radio show CounterSpin (1/15/10).

While other cable news programmers responded to the grim news out of Haiti by calling for emergency aid and furnishing directions for how to help, right-wing religious broadcaster Pat Robertson took to the air with commentary disparaging the earthquake victims in a way that could very possibly discourage needed aid to the stricken nation.

Robertson told viewers of his 700 Club (1/13/10) that Haiti has been visited by so much tragedy over the years because it had signed a deal with the Devil. As Robertson told his co-host, when Haiti was

under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever...they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said, "We will serve you if you will get us free from the French." True story. And so, the devil said, "OK, it's a deal." And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.

Robertson's audience reportedly runs into the millions, and many of them who might normally be willing to give support for disaster relief could  take Robertson's words to heart and close their purses rather than give aid to servants of the Devil. Unsurprisingly, Robertson’s history is also wacky: The Haitian revolution, which embraced the principles of the enlightenment and the American Revolution, achieved victory in 1804 against Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon III  would not even born until 1808.

We weren’t expecting a treatise from Robertson about how Haiti, with the help of U.S.-backed tyrants, has become the one of the world's poorest nations. But imagine how sick someone must be to respond to news of wide-scale death and destruction by saying, in effect, "Well, they got what they signed up for." Unfortunately, we don't have to imagine--we've got Pat Robertson.

Voter turnout in last weekend's Haitian Senate elections was very low; observers cited in a Reuters report, "Haitians Largely Boycott Senate Election,” estimated it at less than 10 percent, which an Al Jazeera report attributed in part to "resentment over the banning of a popular party"--Fanmi Lavalas--as well as disenchantment with the ruling government and poverty. A short Associated Press report published in the New York Times (4/20/09) about the vote had an odd spin on these issues:

The success of Sunday's election was threatened by voter apathy and opposition from the Fanmi Lavalas Party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The party's candidates were disqualified by Haiti's provisional electoral council.

So the election's "success" was threatened by a popular political party's "opposition" to its own exclusion from the democratic process? It's a rather peculiar idea of what constitutes a threat to democracy--especially as the Times article makes no mention of the fact that Aristide, Haiti's twice-elected former president, remains in exile in South Africa, effectively barred from returning to Haiti after being overthrown five years ago in a U.S.-backed coup.