Because I don't hew to the extremes, Limbaugh neither offends nor validates me ideologically. But like all talk-radio windbags, whether they blare from the right or the left, he insults critical thought.
I swear, the guy must employ a staff devoted exclusively to creating "triggers" -- Hussein, Democrat Party, drive-by media and the like, terms guaranteed to get his mindless listeners convulsing like neo-con clones of Maynard G. Krebs. Yesterday's buzz-word, repeated no fewer than two dozen times during a dissociative rant about visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao, was ChiCom.
I'm not going to dignify it with a definition. You figure it out.
Since the Tucson shooting there's been lots of chatter about the increasingly negative tone of American politics. Salon.com columnist Gene Lyons has an interesting theory about that:
"Ever since Rush Limbaugh adapted the techniques of drive-time sports radio to politics -- the loudmouth hyperbole, the fake omniscience, the mute button -- the mass-marketing of outrage to people stuck in freeway traffic with blood-pressure levels already approaching the blowout range has coarsened public discourse to the level of road rage."As an example, Lyons points to something that Limbaugh said last week. This unfiltered bullshit comes directly from Limbaugh's site:
Lyons observes, quite correctly,"What [the Tucson shooter] knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country. ... He knows that a Democrat Party, the Democrat Party, is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he's just a victim."
"That smiling mug shot, this guy...understands he's got a political party doing everything it can -- plus a local sheriff -- doing everything that they can to make sure he's not convicted of murder but something lesser."
"If you believe that, you'll believe anything."No thinking person would. The column concludes:
Not me. How about you?"Meanwhile, the Tucson radio station that advertised 'Rush Limbaugh: Straight Shooter' with a billboard full of simulated bullet holes has taken it down.
"See, they compete with each other, these clowns, to set you against an imaginary enemy consisting of your friends and neighbors because conflict pushes ratings, and higher ratings lead to more money.
"Are you going to keep helping them do it?"
* * *
Gene Lyons also tipped me off to another post-Tucson gem. Mark Shields attributed this observation to his friend Allen Ginsberg:
I couldn't agree more."This week, we saw a white, Catholic, Republican federal judge murdered on his way to greet a Democratic woman, member of Congress, who was his friend and was Jewish. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year-old Mexican-American college student, who saved her, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon.
"And then it was all eulogized and explained by our African-American president. And, in a tragic event, that's a remarkable statement about the country."
