Thursday, March 12, 2009
Mythologizing Limbaugh
I was in the A&P just now and noticed the spanking new issue of Newsweek with Rush's face on the cover with some kind of duct tape over his mouth it seemed to me. The big bold headline: ENOUGH! A Conservative's Case Against Limbaugh by David "Axis of Evil" Frum. Now if you turn this around and let's say it said instead "A Conservative's Case Against the Z-Man" I'd be tickled pink, I'm on the MAP and I must have some real pull, they must fear me for a reason if I'm on the cover of a national newsweekly but I would also feel I'm somehow being mythologized, a victim of apotheosis or being turned into a god but I'm only a blogger and he's only a radio guy but I suppose you're not supposed to diss the nation's first African-American president, for God's sake show some respect! but imho Frum is a dick. It's the BOX again that bothers me, what we're allowed to say and think is getting smaller by the day and people like Frum seem perfectly content to masturbate to Conformity, to hump the Rules even as they make them up as they go along. People who make it their hobby to attack those who think outside the box, they seem dangerous to me. The BOX now says you have to like the man who Made History even if you disagree with his political philosophy but libs never liked Bush and Rush calling Rahm Emanuel a ballerina is pretty mild stuff if you want to get all Michael Moore about it. There's an old old saying, you scratch my balls I'll scratch yours and neocon Frum making his case against a conservative legend in a major liberal newsweekly, there's some kind of weird footplay going on here even if I can't put my finger on it.
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I predict that Rush really loves the attention. I for one enjoy watching people get worried by his pull.
ReplyDeleteYou know, Z, the aphorism "you scratch my balls I'll scratch yours.." is known in polite society as 'quid pro quo'. :)
ReplyDeleteFirst (and last) time I heard Rush
was in the late '80s. Driving solo across Montana. He made me so mad, I turned him off. Well 630 miles is a lot of silence, so I twirled the dial (used to have dials back then) and got the
'Hospital Report' from some backwater village...Wally Krebs' kidney stone passed, Agnes Howard checked in with palpitations and
Morris Crenshaw's chainsaw laceration was doing well. Not much more interesting than Limbaugh, so I drove 10 hours in
'golden' silence, counting mule deer and antelope. Whenever Rush comes up....I think of Montana. :)
...and golden silence....and a place in Billings with thick Angus steaks....
I myself haven't listened to Rush in like literally two years. I'm coming at it from a totally free speech angle and when I see his face on the cover of some national magazine being muzzled I get concerned. The solution is what BB did, used to be you just twirled the dials.
ReplyDeleteLove him or hate him Rush is dead on when he says he's the last man standing.
ReplyDeleteIt used to be that the media were watchdogs of government. They were always skeptical of its actions. Now, it's become increasingly apparent that quite the opposite is true. They've largely become not only apologists for government but in many cases cheerleaders.
Take it from Thomas Jefferson:
"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
You can throw in Savage too, he said the other night "you want me to exist because it's a desert out there." Well NBC and the rest are all owned by corporations so you don't really get media looking into or questioning government anymore, I've noticed this for years now. WHO made Madoff possible or was he a lone man deal, who enabled him or looked the other way? Is anybody besides Savage asking these questions?
ReplyDeleteunfortunately, it's not only rush who get's this treatment (albeit his is the most visible at the moment)!! anyone who happens to question any of the obama-group policies or plans is immediately labelled as (1) racist; (2) not supporting the historic presidency and (3) stupid.
ReplyDeletei agree with soapbox - love or hate him rush is the most publicaly vocal republican at the moment. i'm not a regular listener, but i do manage once or twice a week.
z-man - tim mccarver!!!! i like joe buck (he's the best sports announcer around at the moment) but tim mccarver!!?
tks for stoppin by!
(2)not supporting the historic presidency - BINGO
ReplyDeleteI know some people can't stand McCarver. I worked with a custodian once and he said he used to watch Mets games being announced at the time by McCarver so he'd turn the mute button on but turn on the radio and listen to the late Mets broadcaster Bob Murphy instead while watching the tv at the same time. Tim seems polarizing for some reason, you either like him or you don't but I'm guessing he overanalyzes games maybe.
Rush calls a spade a spade(no racial undertones implied here) and the leftards can't stand that. It just doesn't fit their plan for the perfect socialistic society. Unfortunately, he is preaching to the choir.
ReplyDeleteLou Dobbs (MY favorite news commentator guy) reaches conservatives, but also, he has a huge moderate following.
Which of the 2 does the most for our causes, in my opinion, it's Dobbs. He attacks the issues as ruthlessly as Rush, but he does not use the same zeal when attacking people, so he flies under the liberal radar.
In my opinion, the best radio guy for the cause is Jason Lewis (he's got his own national show now and fills in for Rush on occasion: in fact he did both yesterday and today).
ReplyDeleteThis guy is principled to a degree I've not seen for a long time. He makes a point of taking moderate Republicans to task and in fact there are quite a few in Minnesota that do not care for him.
He knows full well that in politics, it's futile to be all things to all people. Furthermore, he knows that politics isn't about "winning". It's about one thing and one thing only...pursuing a cause; a movement. That movement is of course expanding liberty and freedom for all individuals.
Whay are you conservatives so afraid of Obama? You and the rest of your ilk have call him a commie, the most leftist senator in the senate, even a Muslim, but what really scares you people is the fact that he will probably be a pretty good president. After Bush the rest of the world really wants a competent, intelligent and energenic president to show the world how the job should really be done. But you conservatives would rather sit and bitch and moan and complain about Obama and other "GOOD" politicians than admit that the clown they loved so much for the past 8 years was such a collasial failure, and Obama is just more proof of that.
ReplyDeleteI hope Obama shows all of you what a real leader can do!
To get back to your "Hero" Rush Limberger, and other conservitive talk show hosts like Sean Hannity and
Mark Levin they are very careful to separate the man and his policies. "I want my country to succeed," therefore "I want Obama to fail" he says. "But it cannot succeed under his policies. So if I root for his policies, then I'm rooting against liberty, free enterprise, national security. Why would I want to be against those things?"
Did you ever hears such a cop out in your life? I didn't..
Republicans/conservatives are just proud ignorant Americans. For some reason it offends them to try to shed a little light and truth on what is right if it's not in their agenda.
They are afraid that Obama will bring this Country back on its feet and the Rep will look stupid or good old Rush will look more stupid then he does now..
For the record Erik, the facts are the facts. And, to quote John Adams, "...whatever may be your wishes, your desires, or the dictates of your passion" Obama's voting record has spoken for itself. The assessment, or analysis if you will, was an equation which was applied across the board. It just so happens he came out on top on the liberalism scale.
ReplyDeleteAs for the other assertions, I never personally called him a commie nor did I call him a Muslim. In fact, when some on the right said he was a Muslim I countered by asking why that mattered? There is nothing in the Constitution which would preclude him from the office even if he were.
But that's neither here nor there. I'm not here to defend anyone else's pointed commentary about the man.
I will tell you that I am, if nothing else, a very objective individual. It is for this reason, or perhaps because of it, that I pursued an educational course on the philosophy of objectivism to begin with. That said, while there were and still are, apologists for Bush despite his great many failures, we are witnessing a similar trend on the Democratic side of the aisle. Democratic party loyalists are so completely enamored, or perhaps blinded, by the image of Obama that they haven't taken any steps to engage their minds in assessing what his policies are and what effect they may have. They are in essence operating exclusively on feeling. I know these people Erik. I see them everyday. I see the drooling over the Time magazine, over the Vanity Fair etc.
And really Erik..you come off as pretty juvenile and vitriolic when you refer to Rush as Limberger. And because I'm just as quick to point it out when those on the right call Obama Obambi or Clinton Clintoon I have no problem with pointing it out to you.
But what really tells the story about you and those of your ideological pursuasions is this:
"I hope Obama shows all of you what a real leader can do!"
I can't help but notice that you didn't state that you know that he will show us all what a real leader can do.
This speaks VOLUMES to my previous point. You are so blinded by the aura and image that you do not have any intellectual concept of the substance therein.
And because of this you are left with nothing but "Hope" that the policies are good; that the ideas will "work". All this of course without even knowing what they are.
personally, i rather hope obama does succeed in bringing this country out of it's current slump = = but in my conservative opinion he's way off base in how he's attempting to do it. it's only going to put us further into that slump. but it's a typical liberal vs conservative disagreement - has nothing to do with who is implementing the policy. could be any liberal democrat and my argument would be the same - the policies won't/can't/been proven not to work!! but under the fear factor of the dems any disagreement is prohibited...
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Rush. As sure as God gave Hillary extra wide hips, I want Obama to fail...Since Obama is basically a Kenyan Marxists, otherwise known as a Communist ... Communists come in all colors, shapes and stripes and they are responsible for killing about 125 million people in the 20th century alone.
ReplyDeleteI hope he fails miserably. The man is the ideological equivalent of Benito Mussolini.
It is about turning our country socialist. Yes I want him to fail.
Well said Erik. Very well said. Those clowns have absolutely no interest in the success of America. Their only interest is in protecting their tax breaks and dividing the races (as a means to promote their republican agenda). Sickening!
ReplyDeleteErik, I will concede one point and only one. He is a good leader. He is doing a super job of leading you F###ING lemmings right on down to the sea. You and your fan club, so-called common sense, just can not comprehend the difference between wanting him to fail and wanting America to fail. You see, WE believe that his success will be America's failure. They go hand in hand.
ReplyDeleteIt takes common sense to know that what we care about is our freedom, nothing more, nothing less. That's where Rush gets it right and libs get it wrong.
ReplyDeleteLet me expand on my earlier comment to "Common Sense". I believe our country's greatness exists because of the freedoms we have in our country. Yet you say I do not care about the success of our country. Doesn't add up.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, you say that the agenda of the Republicans is to divide the races, yet the chairman on the RNC is black, could you explain to me how that fact divides the races?
I kinda thought promotion of things like quotas, aka affirmative action divides the races and last I checked that was a Democrat principle. Then you had that stupid minister at O's inauguration rapping about yellow being mellow, Eric Holder calling us a nation of cowards. Then there was the chimp cartoon in the NY Post which had absolutely nothing to do with race, not one iota but Rupert Murdoch apologized anyway and said they'll be more sensitive about these matters in the future thereby curtailing Sean Delonas' freedom of speech. Frankly I'm tired of the subject but the libs won't let it rest.
ReplyDeleteFunny story though. I have a black neighbor, real nice guy, would do anything to help you. He's Jamaican and has dreadlocks. Anyway my elderly neighbor gets Meals on Wheels every day and so the van pulled up the other week and a black girl gets out of the van with my neighbor's meal. So my neighbor, the one with the dreadlocks is doing something in his alley and his house is right next to her house and the black girl sees him and rushes my neighbor into her house and says "quick get in the house and lock the door, something doesn't look right" and then my neighbor goes "oh that's my neighbor."
ReplyDeleteIf people who criticize President Obama are going to be called racists, then we are never as a country ever going to get past race as an issue. I disagree with the man Obama because his IDEAS do not match mine, not because his skin color doesn't match mine.
ReplyDeleteMost of us may have graduated high school and even gone on to college but mentally too many of us are still stuck in the 6th grade.
ReplyDelete6th grade is being generous...
ReplyDeleteMost non-Black Americans would be overjoyed to meet Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods or Denzel Washington? They have crossed the "color" barrier, and entered into a financial world that most of us will never know. This is a world where a guy like Billy Joel can marry a woman like Christie Brinkley. [Chuckle]
ReplyDeleteWe can't all be rich athletes, musicians or stars of one sort or another. However we can go to school, work hard, save or money, and grow up to become bill paying Conservatives, and not deadbeat racist Liberal Democrats always figuring out better ways to wage war against achievers.
Since the Obama War on Achievement began on Nov 4, the stock market has fallen by 31%. The phenomenon of the market falling occurs these days with regularity it seems every time Obama speaks publicly or makes a policy decision. A 35 point gain in the market was deemed the other day as a "market rebound". For Liberals, I guess it is! However, Conservatives are asking how low can it go?
Here's the wrap:
The shift in our discussion has gone from racism to finances, thankfully. This discussion highlights Obama's total incompetence. People are now actually going beyond his "words" (and cleanliness), and feeling the impact his policies are having on their retirement and investment portfolios. Portfolios are not Black or White, but green, and I am not talking Al Gore green.
Obama knows he's wrong in the path he has chosen for America. He has the evidence of history, the real indicator. And he also has the evidence of what is happening right before his eyes…the present meltdown.
No matter how you slice this cake, there won't be enough to go around. And Obama will soon find out that the world isn't as focused on race, as much as they are focused on their pocketbooks.
Nonetheless, Obama won't likely change, as he suffers from a worse pathology, that won't allow him to admit he's wrong. He is a deluded dreamer in search of Utopia, one of his own creation, and one that does not exist. I say a president who believes he needs to remake America should not be president. Particularly one who can't operate without a Boogeyman.
And by the way I not only hope he fails, I pray he doesn’t finish his first term. He is an anti-American racist bigot of the lowest order. Additionally, he is from the Chicago criminal school of politics, so either impeachment or resignation in shame will cut short this sad experiement in allowing a foreign-born mooooslim into the White House
That's my rant!
Say what you will about Rush he ain't causing the stock market to go down. Well said GMC, I'm sure if you ever blog it'll be kickass.
ReplyDelete"And by the way I not only hope he fails, I pray he doesn’t finish his first term. He is an anti-American racist bigot of the lowest order. Additionally, he is from the Chicago criminal school of politics, so either impeachment or resignation in shame will cut short this sad experiement in allowing a foreign-born mooooslim into the White House"
ReplyDeleteWell said? Not even fox news claims obama is muslim or was foreign born. But I guess fox news is controlled by the global liberal conspiracy too, huh?
And that's an interesting theory about the stock market, but perhaps the housing crisis, bank failures, credit problems, job losses, and decreases in consumer spending have something to do with the stock market crash that started before obama was elected? Just a thought. Although I guess it is possible that obama and the liberals orchestrated all this so that they can give everyone universal health care. They are all powerful after all.
At least the democrats have a plan. The republicans, like GMC70, have no alternative and only seem to be able look for ways to attack obama rather than try to help the country.
You know, extremists have one big problem (and I'm talking conservative and liberal extremists): nothing can ever sway them from their opinions. It doesn't matter how much evidence they see, they always find a way to discredit evidence that doesn't back up their opinions, and they only look for and accept evidence that supports their opinions. They all think that they're some kind of genius- their psychological genius tells them exactly what the other side thinks and what motivates them (Funny that the psychological descriptions often consist of one word like bigot, racist, idiot etc.). Their economic genius lets them know exactly how advance our prosperity. It's amazing how much they know and how certainly they know it.
When it comes down to it we are each terribly incompetent when it comes to knowing what's best for the country - when a single person knows whats best for a country (and is allowed to rule it) we call that a monarchy. That is why we have a democracy where we all contribute. Bush and the republicans got their chance to contribute and now the other side has their chance to balance things out.
If you don't like it, why don't you suggest a constructive alternative rather than whining?
Also this whole thing about wanting obama to fail is just a neat trick to make liberals angry, accomplishing nothing but distracting the conversation to a semantic game. At the very least Rush could have used words that were clear rather then misleading.
ReplyDeleteI think Rush was very clear, and as far as I know we still have the first amendment so he has a right to say it.
ReplyDeleteI would agree that republicans do not have an alternative plan, but conservatives do. It's called free market capitalism, and if the government would stop intervening in it, then the good companies could prosper and the bad companies will go away.
Wanting people to fail, I usually don't but I had this bad manager once and I was so happy to see him fail and his sales go down because the prick was soon transferred. Re extremism of whatever stripe I think it's a word that's overused by people who believe in this Gospel of Moderation, stay in the middle where it's warm and comfy but don't go out near the borders. If you want to get all Biblical about it God said somethign once about the lukewarm. For me moderates have no passion, it's all about being moderate and even if I don't agree with liberals I can respect their passion. GMC's post was well said even if I don't agree with the relevancy of the last part. By overtaxing the wealthy Obama is punishing achievement but to put it in such stark terms seems to offend some people.
ReplyDeleteBeth is right, in the old days bad companies went under all the time and that's as it should be. So now those AIG executives are using most of their bailout money so they can get their fat bonuses and Obama is all pissed. True the AIGers are a bunch of pigs but only a true idealist like Obama couldn't see this coming, he's naive to the core. IMO Obama has too many irons in the fire, look at all he's done in only two months when he has at least four years!! IMO this shows he doesn't think things through, that stimulus bill had to be on his desk ASAP and the reason he doesn't think things through is because he's thought things through in the past in a general way and that's why he's a liberal, I mean isn't it obvious that throwing money at a problem is going to solve it, what's to discuss? Printing money and printing money is just going to cause inflation in the long run. There are pragmatic liberals willing to bend and idealistic liberals who won't budge and as for Rush that's a red herring.
ReplyDeleteNow some of you may be asking the question why I'm more partial to Rush than Hannity or even Ann Coulter. It's because I've listened to Rush long enough to know that on balance he's more civil than the other two though just as passionate, he really doesn't insult callers personally the way even Mark Levin does. Maybe what I'm saying is you'd think Obama being such an advocate of civil politics would go after the others more and leave Rush alone.
ReplyDeleteRush is Obama's greatest threat because he has a huge following, and as for the whole AIG bonus thing, that proves why bad companies should fail. I mean if they did dumb things to bring the company to the point of ruin then it goes to reason that give them more money and they'll make more unwise decisions with how to use it.
ReplyDeleteModeration can be synonymous with ignorance where it's all warm and fuzzy, but my own brand of moderation is down right scary (and I'm sure you'll agree with me ;)
ReplyDeleteI don't come to a question with a predetermined answer. To me, that is just another form of ignorance. If you take just about any topic there will be different ideas, different angles and perspectives, different ways of seeing things. My brand of moderation tells me that my intrinsic biases are weaknesses in thought that were handed to me by my up-bringing. The topics of religion and morality are not off limits in my questioning of myself, in fact, because they are so important they demand questioning. But it is so common among people that they simply accept without questioning the values and beliefs that were handed to them. The children of christians almost always become christians, the children of muslims,budhist, atheists and all the rest are the same. People born in countries where they stone women to death think it's fine and dandy and so on. Each group thinks they are so high and mighty, yet no culture or country is immune.
One glaring example is our own history with slavery. In our past it was commonly thought that slavery was moral. What more extreme example do we need to encourage us to question our assumptions about how we live our life? What better example do we need to know that we are not a righteous people?
To me, the most important quality of thought is honesty, yet self deception is a sneaky devil. If we were slave holders in early America, what quality of thought would have revealed our moral weakness to ourselves? At the same time, what kind of honest thought like this could exist without it undermining us by forcing us to question everything and not knowing a thing?
This may all seem like some kind of abstract thought game, but if you were born in 1792, would you have owned a slave? If you were born in Iran, would you have engaged in a stoning?
When it comes to arguments about free trade vs. keynesian spending, why is this a politcal debate rather than an economic one? I accept Beth's position that the reblicans think free trade is the way to go. What I'm not going to do is debate the issue further cause I'm not an economist.
ReplyDeleteSame goes for global warming, shouldn't climatologists be the one's arguing over how our atmosphere works?
Same goes for evolution, the efficacy of different populations of stem cells, or whether marijuana can be a useful medicine.
You bring up several good points with which I can't really take issue but as for myself I was thoroughly raised a Catholic but do question aspects of the faith. I go to church every week as I'm now a godfather to my nephew but lately my biggest bone of contention is the need for Confession, why won't God forgive you if you don't confess your sins to a priest? Why is it not enough to be sorry in your heart, why does he even need to know the minutiae, a formulaic documentation of your weaknesses? & yet there are staunch Catholics who never question their own faith, who simply follow every tenet but on bulk the faith makes sense to me...
ReplyDeletePot as medicine. Well we pretty much covered pychedelics as medicine at a couple of other threads and that one STILL amazes the hell out of me but honestly the people I've known who are regular pot users, the pot doesn't make them more mellow, in fact they become more contentious. Not a scientist of course and maybe they had these personality predispositions to begin with but in one case the young guy I know was the most easygoing fellow, a pleasant conversationalist but after running with the pot crowd he became hard to get along with, would go off on angry tangents out of the blue. I'm tolerant of potheads, it certainly isn't as dangerous as LSD or PCP (but not benign either imo) but I didn't see the peaceful hippy effects either. It brings up an interesting side though, say a workplace tests for drugs before they hire you and you have a medical license so to speak to use it to treat your glaucoma...
ReplyDeleteI don't think one needs to be an expert on a subject to have an opinion.
ReplyDelete"I don't think one needs to be an expert on a subject to have an opinion."
ReplyDeleteOf course you don't have to be an expert to have an opinion, but sometimes you do to have a reasonable opinion. I mean, what do you think about proteases as targets for cancer fighting drugs? Would it be a wise investment to research them or waste of money? Most people would just listen to harry reid, rush limbaugh or their neighbors dog and go with that. In my opinion when non experts argue about technical things it just adds noise to the conversation.
But lest we forget I believe the experts have agendas too, why should they be immune to biases of thought as you put it like the rest of us? Are they somehow above all this? Abortion/breast cancer connection or non-connection, you can't tell me the political positions of the researchers doesn't somehow influence their conclusions even if only subliminally. I often feel the expert class is overrated.
ReplyDelete