So on one side is Michael J. Fox, who is tragically, seriously afflicted with Parkinson's disease, and has made a political ad supporting Missouri Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, because her opponent, incumbent Jim Talent, has vociferously and consistently opposed stem-cell research. The ad is very moving and effective.
On the other side you have noted sex tourist/pillhead/serial liar/moral leper Rush Limbaugh, who has outdone himself by asserting that Fox deliberately either didn't take his medication or "acted" up the characteristics of his disease.
Of course it's untrue, and medically impossible, like it even needed to be said. So what is Limbaugh's purpose in even bringing up such a revolting accusation? What practical effect did he hope to achieve in taking this needlessly offensive tack? Does Limbaugh think that Fox has been faking it all this time, that he's just doing this political ad thing for shits and giggles?
I understand that by definition, the people who still take a cheap carny huckster like Limbaugh even remotely seriously are terminally stupid to begin with. But you know, a few companies still sponsor Limbaugh's show, for some reason. Perhaps it's time to make it not worth their while to do so. It's happened before, and maybe it's time it happened again.
This is not a free speech issue; Limbaugh is free to puke whatever morally craven bullshit he wants on the air. But short of waiting for Peggy Noonan to register her clucking disapproval at all the incivility -- which will never happen if the perpetrator is not named Gore, Clinton, or Streisand -- there's not really another way to register contempt at such vile nonsense. If I were a believer in the power of prayer, I'd simply pray for karma, but it doesn't seem to catch up to these people, at least not to the degree of their scummy rhetoric.
And sadly, Limbaugh (and Coulter, Hannity, Savage, and the rest of these animals) is really as much a symptom as a cause -- he gives his morlocks what they want, and what they want is a toxic brew of ignorance and spite, psychological projection, affirmation, emotional investment. It's important to keep that in mind, that while Limbaugh is smart enough to know better (and when you get right down to it, his personal problems may actually be a manifestation of his profound guilt at knowing better, which I suppose would be somewhat karmic), he presides over a far-flung rabble of emotionally-stunted idiots who take his buffoonery as received wisdom.
And they vote.
6 comments:
Such bitterness, such hopelessness in preemption. Even before the left hath lost, we know it to be so, and it pains us to know.
"Another possibility is that it's just another brazen attempt to pass off complete lies as truth."
I'm going with this choice. Very much like the "Steele Democrat" campaign. Misdirection for those who arent paying attention.
Ron:
Holy shit, that Steele link is something else. These bastards just never fail to astonish.
Anonymous:
Do me a favor and explain yourself a little further. I'm smelling a concern troll, but sometimes my olfactory lobe tricks me, and you're being just cryptic enough to be a parody troll.
So I'd like a little clarification before I get medieval on the wrong person's ass, because as far as I'm concerned, concern trolls should be used for medical experiments. Then we wouldn't have to worry about harvesting blastocysts for research. It's a win-win.
The Republicans lost me when I figured out that they depended on the voters ignorance to get elected. The more you learn about what the GOP does in office and what they want to do, the less likely you would ever want to vote for them. This is why they hide it from you constantly.
The Democrats are the opposite. The more you know about their positions, the more they make sense. And Dems do not blatently mislead and lie during elections.
Limbaugh and friends have always been about hiding the truth and selling a lie like it was the sexiest thing on earth. It's unfortunate that so many Americans have been duped for life. It will take time to fix.
Okay, I guess my olfactory lobe did trick me some initially, which is actually what I was hoping for.
I absoultely agree with your take on the respective approaches of each party. The media, bless their pointy little heads, spend endless amounts of time and column inches chicken-egging the situation, and never really getting a handle on it.
At the end of the day, it's market-driven; i.e., the fault of the people for not just allowing this degree of bamboozlement, but actually welcoming it, whether through active participation in "values" nonsense, or just apathy and indifference, ignorant cynical posturing.
The reason politics is perhaps the only job where expertise is practically inverse to popularity is because we allow it to be so. If we insisted on knowledge, competence, and honesty, they'd have to give it to us, or lose their jobs.
When we start demanding those things from ourselves, then we will better be able to demand them from our politicians. This election is being portrayed as a referendum on Bush, on the war, etc., but it's really a referendum on ourselves, and what kind of government we think we deserve. Because if the Democrats can't make at least moderate gains across the board in this perfect political storm, then they're simply no longer a viable entity. And then you really do have a one-party state.
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