Flush Limpballs

I don't think Limbaugh is a racist per se, any more than Don Imus is actually a racist. On the surface, the two are somewhat comparable in that they trade in the superficial schtick of threadbare Archie Bunkerisms. But if anything, Limbaugh's stylistic tics are and have been much more pernicious, much more attuned with the disgusting underbelly of cracker racism that still festers in pockets -- pockets which are coincidentally the most inclined to buy the rest of Limbaugh's bottomless piles of lies and slander.

Much of Limbaugh's ebonics-baiting and cheap minstrelsy works on that limbic cracker level. But it has the added bonus of, by caricaturing the Democrats' political correctness on most matters of race, lampooning the reliable "mommy party" trope. This further effeminizes them in the eyes of the manly men closet cases who hang on Limbaugh's every toxic harrumph. It's a pretty sweet scam when you think about it, because it kills several birds with just a few rote affirmations.

We are very much in love with the notion of the "free marketplace" skewing the exchange of ideas, when it manifests itself in the guise of "culture warriors" gang-faxing NBC to pull shows that offend their religious viewpoints. Yet the idea of pulling Limbaugh's racist and sexist schtick out into the sunlight, and perhaps embarrassing his advertisers, forcing them to decide publicly whether this shit adds any value to a serious political debate, is apparently an attack on the first amendment. I don't buy it.

I don't think Imus should have been mau-maued with such haste, nor do I think Limbaugh should just have his useless, drug-addled ass yanked, simply because they say "offensive" things -- or, in the case of Limbaugh, make an actual career out of calumniating his ideological opponents. But I do think that they should be forced to defend the things they do from time to time, to explain themselves. As should their listeners, these dumb-as-dirt morlocks who think that songs like "Barack the Magic Negro" are not only funny, but have any real point to them.

It's of a piece with Ann Coulter's nonsense. If you think that a serial plagiarist who cracks wise about assassinating presidents and supreme court justices, and calls the widows of 9/11 a bunch of opportunistic whores is somehow "funny", or somehow makes some sort of coherent point, then fucking say so. If these people cannot defend their choices, then they should fuck off already. And if the companies who sponsor animals like Limbaugh, Michael Weiner, and the rest of the Horst Wessel gang, can only defend that sponsorship of destructive rhetoric in the most crass terms of cost-effectiveness, then maybe it's time to make it a little less cost-effective for them.