Someone please tell me how Rush Limbaugh has become the putative leader of the Republican Party. Is it really possible that he hopes that the country slips into a long economic depression to satisfy his desire to tip the balance of power in D.C.?
It must be pretty easy for Mr. Limbaugh to bloviate about economic policy, notwithstanding his lack of any known undergraduate or graduate education on the subject. After all, he earns millions each year pandering to an audience that froths at the mouth at the mere suggestion of a Democrat on a local school board, let alone one in the White House.
Limbaugh, no matter what happens with the economy, won't lose his house in this mess and won't have to decide whether to forgo food in order to pay for prescription drugs. (I'll refrain from making too much of the drug addiction issue because it's not terribly fair, but I would think that someone who battled addiction would have at least some sympathy for people who tried to make wise choices about their lives but were unlucky or uninformed). Among his millions of listeners, a percentage will have all of their belongings moved onto the street over the next year. Some will resort to skipping life-saving medications in order to make a house payment on a house that they will likely lose to foreclosure anyway.
Mr. Limbaugh is entitled to his opinions. The Constitution has recently done a much better job of protecting the opinions of wealthy pundits than it has in protecting its average citizens from wiretapping or the right to establish families that just happen to be headed by two men or two women.
The sad part of all of this - at least to me - is that Rush Limbaugh gets more time on the air than hundreds of smarter, more thoughtful voices that may dislike Barack Obama's policy initiatives. His brand of vitriol is exactly what I am talking about when I started this blog.
I don't begrudge his economic success, nor do I think he has nothing to offer on policy debates.
I simply think that he crossed the line when he used his incredibly powerful position in the media to argue that it is better to suffer through a devastating, worldwide economic depression than it is to permit a Democrat to use all the tools available to him to blunt its impact or stop it altogether.
I think we should call on Mr. Limbaugh to lay out a comprehensive economic plan that includes estimates on home foreclosures, bank failures, access to health care, education and a host of other important issues. Let's hold him to the standard of a Presidential campaign. The country just made a decision in November on a general direction for the country. If he had a better argument, he should have run himself. I sincerely doubt he would have received 1% of the vote. That's what gives me a great deal of hope for the country. I might be wrong but I think that Mr. Limbaugh's appeal is much more about entertainment than it is about substance.
Do we really - as a nation - care about the party affiliation of the person who fixes the mess we're in right now? I doubt it.
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2 comments:
There is a quotation from my favorite author, Edward Abbey, that I feel sums up Rush and his "Ditto-heads": "Fantastic doctrines require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. Thus the fear and hate, thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward."
Could you image the howling of these wolves if it had been left-leaning on-air personality publicly stating that they hope W.'s policy in Iraq failed? The base hypocrisy of such "patriots" turns my blood cold.
If we are going to annoint radio commentators to positions of such authority without an election, I choose Click and Clack from Car Talk. At least they are cheerful and we'll know how to keep our older cars running while we wait to see whether we will ever be able to afford a new one.
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