1 Boring Old Man

I guess this is the last in my Rush Limbaugh series. I usually wear out after about three days. I want to highlight two of his topics: "‘Candidate of Race’ Speech Brings Obama’s Authenticity into Question" and "Obama Denounced Don Imus, But Won’t Disown Reverend Wright." One of my reasons for occasionally gritting my teeth and reading Rush Limbaugh’s site is to try to ‘get’ his writers’ patterns. Here, on the day after denouncing Obama’s speech on race, we hear it "brings his authenticity into question." What that means in Limbaugh-land is that it was a good speech and well received. Had it been a bad speech, widely panned, they would join in the melee. When anyone undercuts his attacks, he amoves his attack to their character and/or integrity. If you blow it, you’re a boob. If you don’t, you’re a liar. Another regular ploy follows. Had Obama completely denounced Wright, he would have been labelled a traitor to his friends and a liar. Had he stuck by Wright fully, then he would have been a black racist. Obama renounced what Wright said, explained why he said it, and did not renounce the man himself. Limbaugh’s writers got creative. Obama denounced Imus’ "ho" comment about a basketball player, but not Wright’s racist comments. Ergo, he only renounces racism from white people. Of course, Obama made a huge point about that. But on a more superficial level, Obama and Don Imus have hardly had a twenty year relationship. Imus had not been involved with the kind of community building work that Reverend Wright had. It’s an absurd criticism, but it illustrates the Limbaugh writers’ methodology – a tree diagram with criticism and contempt on every branch. It’s called "spin." You take any story, and assess which way to tell it to achieve maximum damage [or maximum heroism]. While eveyone does it, there are levels, and Limbaugh’s staff is "way out on a limb."

Cheney and Bush have some writers too who operate the same machinery at a slightly more sophisticated level. Cheney’s in the Middle East to marvel at the wonderous surge, along with McCain and Lieberman. Bush was giving a fifth anniversary speech about the Iraq War. The reason I hid in the bathroom was that the spin was making me seasick. The Iraq War has been a comedy of errors. But in today’s speech, Bush recounted the course of the war in painful detail, characterizing each blunder and miscalculation as a challenge heroically overcome with by his Administration and our brave military. He even reccounted the stories of Hussein’s torture and human rights abuse [leaving out, of course, our own]. By a third of the way through it, I just couldn’t listen anymore. To avoid the risk of embarassing my wife in front of her Physical Therapists by yelling at the T.V. set, I escaped to the bathroom for the duration of the speech.

But back to Rush, there’s another strategy that’s always waiting in the wings – "The Obama Mask Has Come Off. Behind all the flowery talk, he’s just another liberal." It reminds me of the ultimate Grammar School insult, "He has Cooties."