ARCHIVE: If I'm to Listen to Rush on the Radio, Can it Please Be the Band?

*** This entry was originally posted to LiveJournal November 24, 2009 ***


Yesterday I was scanning radio stations in my car and I came across Rush Limbaugh. So I actually paused to listen for a few minutes (let it not be said that I will decry something without experience of it). By the time I arrived at my destination, I was so angry, appalled, and horrified that I felt a wave of physical nausea.

I wouldn't have thought it possible, but Rush is an even bigger, fatter idiot than he was when Al Franken's book came out (Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, Al Franken, Dell Publishing, 1999).

Say, did you know that every single one of us liberals eats babies and tramples puppies?

Okay, so Rush didn't exactly say that. He did say, however, that every single liberal is a liar or a dupe. So I figure that once the shock value--and therefore the ratings uptick--of "liars and dupes" wears off, the baby-eating and puppy-trampling charges can't be that many steps down the line for him.

Rush advances nothing except Rush--certainly not the level of political discourse, certainly not the country. The only other thing I can think of that he might advance is the cause of hatred and ignorance.

I am a liberal, especially socially (fiscally I tend more toward the center). I do not consider myself a liar or a dupe. I don't appreciate being called a liar or a dupe by someone who lies and then dupes his legions of vassals into believing only him.

If you, gentle reader, hold opinions of a more conservative bent than mine, that's fine. We can discuss and debate those opinions, and please let's do so. If, however, you--as Rush specifically instructed his listeners to do yesterday--approach that discussion from the premise that every single thing out of my mouth is a lie, our discussion, and on the larger scale the country, will go nowhere.

Please, I implore you. However conservative your opinions might be, please don't take what Rush says to heart. He's not helping anything--except his own ratings, and himself to more mashed potatoes.