Digby [and almost everyone else in the Blogosphere] is reacting to a particularly odious Rush Limbaugh radio exchange:
LIMBAUGH: Here’s [caller] in Lake Orion, Michigan. Thank you for calling. Great to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. It’s great to talk to you. I talked to you once before. I’ve been listening to you for a couple of years now, and I think I’m getting brighter, but there’s a lot to be learned. I know I’m no expert in foreign affairs, but what really confuses me about the liberals is the hypocrisy when they talk about how we have no reason to be in Iraq and helping those people, but yet everybody wants us to go to Darfur. I mean, aren’t we going to end up in a quagmire there? I mean, isn’t it – I don’t understand. Can you enlighten me on this?
LIMBAUGH: Yeah. This is – you’re not going to believe this, but it’s very simple. And the sooner you believe it, and the sooner you let this truth permeate the boundaries you have that tell you this is just simply not possible, the better you will understand Democrats in everything. You are right. They want to get us out of Iraq, but they can’t wait to get us into Darfur.
CALLER: Right.
LIMBAUGH: There are two reasons. What color is the skin of the people in Darfur?
CALLER: Uh, yeah.
LIMBAUGH: It’s black. And who do the Democrats really need to keep voting for them? If they lose a significant percentage of this voting bloc, they’re in trouble.
CALLER: Yes. Yes. The black population.
LIMBAUGH: Right. So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela – who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia. You do the same thing.
CALLER: It’s just – I can’t believe it’s really that simple.
Says Digby:
In fact, Darfur is a human tragedy of epic proportions, happening right now before our eyes, and pretty much nobody, certainly not the political class of either party, is much interested in it. So let’s just set that aside.
The hideous, racist assumptions in that little "analysis" are so blatant that it’s startling, even from the disgusting Limbaugh. The charge that African American voters vote on the basis of African politics is so bizarre I don’t even know how to deal with it. And anyway, even if it were true, the fact that the Republicans are a bunch of racist pigs who insisted on supporting apartheid until the bitter end would likely have been the motive, especially since those same Republican racists couldn’t stop talking about welfare queens and running their political campaigns based on thinly veiled racist attacks. While I’m sure black Americans care about Darfur and South Africa as much as the next decent human being, they know very well that the Republican party is filled with racist haters like Limbaugh who despise them. Voting for the Democrats isn’t really that complicated in light of that.
And apparently, the only reason he and his bigoted ditto-head listeners can imagine that anyone would oppose apartheid in South Africa or be horrified at the genocide in Darfur is their own craven political interests. I’m afraid that says more about him than it does about Democrats.
Says me: I don’t believe there was a listener in Lake Orion, Michigan. I believe that was a scriptwriter’s question – and answer. Too many Talking Points. Too quickly answered. I don’t listen to Rush except when I enter some place where it’s playing in the background. It’s never occurred to me that the show is a made up thing – with scripted questions and answers.
In a way, I expect my reaction [and Digby’s] is part of the script. I pass. Invitation to go crazy with Rush declined…
Do you remember when a network hired Rush to be a football commentator? Rush got fired for saying something racist about a black football player. He was strongly criticized but he kept his job on radio. He also didn’t lose his radio job after it was discovered that he had his maid buying bags of a prescription drug for him and that he lost his hearing from the drug and needed a special device to hear implanted behind his ear. Cheney is a frequent guest on his show. He feeds a special need that the Republican party has. Remember how he mocked actor Michael J Fox’s shaking because of his Parkinsons Disease while Fox was doing a Commercial for John Kerry. This isn’t a man, this is a large creep. I’m not a big fan of Rev. Al Sharpton but I was stunned when Don Imus was fired for what he said about the Rutgers basketball team after Sharpton lead a campaign to get rid of Imus. Why don’t we hear about Sharpton trying to get Rush fired? Is Rush radio still being piped to the US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? I remember hearing that Rush’s show was broadcast overseas to our soldiers. What a disgrace.
Gonzales has resigned.