Speaking of Media Filth

I have to admit, of all the horrible, awful, disgusting human beings who pollute our current media discourse, and I include the odious Andrew Malcolm, Bill O’Reilly, Steve Doocy, and the many others, if I had to say who was the worst person to ever occupy the public sphere, it would be, hands down, Piers Morgan. Here he is the other night grilling the doctors who, with their staffs, evacuated NYU after power outages, including having the nursing staff carry babies down multiple flights of stairs while manually ventilating them:

MORGAN: Andrew Rubin, you are, as I said, a V.P. of medical center, clinical affairs and affiliates. The obvious question, it seemed to me last night, remains so now, is how could a busy New York hospital have its backup generators fail when it’s had a week at least to prepare for what everyone was saying was going to be a storm of huge magnitude?

RUBIN: First, before I answer that, let me just say how proud I am to work for NYU Langone Medical Center, where we have physicians like Dr. Rudy and staff and nurses and volunteers and the New York City Fire Department and Police Department, who did an extraordinary effort in incredibly difficult circumstances, evacuating all our patients in 12 hours safely.

It is a miracle. They did a terrific job. We are a massive, huge complex. We have many generators. They are tested all the time. This was an unbelievably powerful storm. Many, many things happened that were really beyond anyone’s control. And that’s what just happened. It’s a—it’s a very unfortunate set of circumstances. But thank God we have such an incredible team of people who were able to do heroic work.

Right now, we’re assessing all of our infrastructure. Our goal is to get back online as soon as possible. Our patients, our staff, our doctors want to get back to work. So priority number one right now is assess the infrastructure. Our buildings are safe but assess the infrastructure, see what damage was done. We had ten feet of water—12 feet of water in our basement, and get the hospital back up and running, get our doctor offices back up and running.

MORGAN: What we’re hearing is that trustees and, indeed, some board members had raised concerns about these generators. And it does seem baffling, as I say, that a New York busy hospital like this could end up having to ferry newborn babies in the middle of a hurricane up and down Manhattan, simply because a hospital like yours, with all its facilities and all its resources, couldn’t get a generator to work.

I mean, is there some big investigation going on now?

RUBIN: Well, I really didn’t come on to talk about the generators. But I can tell you that our generators, we have many. They are tested all the time and in full compliance with all federal and state regulations. And quite frankly, prudence tells us to test them all the time. Our generators were working. This was an unprecedented storm—

MORGAN: but they weren’t working, were they?

RUBIN: They failed.

MORGAN: If they failed, they’re not working, are they?

RUBIN: They started working. And then when the storm waters seeped up the river, things happen with some of the generators. It was a terribly unfortunate event.

But again, the focus here is we got the patients out safely. The staff did a terrific job. We’re very, very pleased with the outcome. And now we’re in recovery mode to get the medical center back up and running.

MORGAN: I understand why it’s your focus. But obviously I think the focus, I would imagine, for the mothers involved last night will be very much what the hell was going on, and why were we having to be moved because of faulty generators. The question I would want to know from the hospital, if I was involved in any way, is how do you have any confidence this won’t happen again? RUBIN: Well, again, I’m not an engineer and I’m not really here to talk about the generators. But I can tell you we have a wonderful institution, great buildings, very, very well running generators. We had an unprecedented storm with an extraordinary amount of water overtaking the city. And we had some problems with those generators.

Mind you, these doctors came on to talk about the heroic action of their staff, but, that’s right, he spent the bulk of the interview berating two physicians about… power generators. Because everyone who has ever been to a hospital knows that pediatricians are in charge of physical operations. And even though they aren’t in charge of that, they tried to answer him, and he wouldn’t accept their response. He simply refused to recognize that the backup generators worked until they got submerged by a tidal surge. It’s almost as if he is so fucking stupid and worthless he doesn’t recognize that when horrible natural events happen, sometimes even back-up plans fail.

And by the way, the five minutes he spent grilling those physicians and the generators and other shit beyond their control, well, suffice it to say, that is five minutes more than he has ever used his CNN platform to discuss his role on the News of the World/Murdoch wiretapping scandals. After all, he was only editor in chief, so how was he supposed to know anything. Unlike those fucking pediatricians, who should know all about the generators at NYU.

I would vote for Mitt Romney if he found a way to make this limey douchebag self-deport.

He is now, at this very moment, flaming Con-Ed for not having the power on quick enough. Can we put Morgan and Sullivan in a pod and launch them back to Liverpool?

via Balloon Juice http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/11/02/speaking-of-media-filth/