Patch Blog: Fools Rush In; The Limbaugh Effect

I have never actually listened to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. I have, however, seen frequent clips of his program, enough to garner the nature of his persona and the flavor of his messaging.

I think it’s safe to say that Rush, in the great tradition of conservative tar-brushing, generates considerably more heat than light in his ruminations on society. And it certainly follows, given his tremendous ratings success, that millions of Americans unabashedly bask in the warm glow of his observations. He is, after all, an “entertainer” as Rick Santorum will quickly tell you, and boy-entertainers, after all, will be boys……..so what’s the point of  getting upset?

It’s not like the landscape of modern talk-radio is flowered with plaintive, enlightened voices rendering Rush an exception in the field of vitriolic excess. No, he can in fact be fairly described as the leader of the pack when it comes to spewing outrage and misinformation just like he did when he assailed Sandra Fluke, women who use contraception, and what he perceives as the promiscuous population of female, student-lawyers at Georgetown Law School.  

One would suspect that Rush, on his fourth wife with nary a child to show for what one might reasonably conclude have been prodigious efforts,  might know a thing or two about birth control, (unless he himself is running on empty).

Then again, maybe not.

In his criticism of Ms. Fluke, Rush demonstrates a total unfamiliarity with the basics of contraception. He labors under the assumption that Ms. Fluke’s - in his eyes - unquenchable penchant for sex requires an equally unquenchable supply of birth control. It seems to escape his razor-sharp mind that having sex once a month or 30 times a month requires exactly the same number of pills (21), diaphragms (1) or IUDS (1).

Never one to allow facts to get in the way of a “good” show, Rush went on for three days labeling Ms. Fluke a “slut,” a “prostitute” and a typical, culture-of-entitlement whiner, which for Rush’s audience is the perfect trifecta of personal assault. But just in case the throngs were not fully sated he added an interesting kicker - since he/they were paying for all of Ms. Fluke’s “fun,” the demand was made that she videotape and upload to the Internet, for both his and his audience’s pleasure, all of her sexual encounters. God knows they earned it!

With that last salvo, Limbaugh apparently went too far, even for an entertainer. He was immediately lambasted by friends and foes for his excessiveness, though it’s hard to see how anybody was caught off guard by any of this since an actual picture of Rush likely accompanies any dictionary definition of the word “excessive.”

Republican Rick Santorum went first, pointing his theologically inspired finger in Limbaugh’s direction, but ultimately blessing the entertainer with a pass on his incorrigible remarks. And then it was the deeply religious or cultish (depending on one’s POV) Mitt Romney’s turn to wade into the fray. After what we all can be assured was an extensive inner dialogue of moral outrage, Romney refused to refute any of the sentiment behind Rush’s bullying attack, but he did, in the end, offer an objection to Rush’s choice of words, as in, “…it’s not the language I would have used.” Thoroughly chastened, Rush went on himself a day or two later to extend his own apology to Sandra Fluke. 

And then came the suits, the purveyors, the ad buyers, the CEO’s, and the entire collection of moneymen, the ones who actually support the Rush Limbaugh Show. And their fury was genuine and heartfelt or at least felt to be potentially injurious to their bottom lines. One such CEO was David Friend of Carbonite who was offended by Limbaugh’s blanket attack on sexually active women. Citing his own daughters, he promptly pulled his company’s advertising from Rush’s show. Nice going David, but let me ask you something - prior to Limbaugh’s latest outrage, and having supported his show with vast advertising dollars in the years and months prior to Rush’s assault on Ms. Fluke and the 99% majority of American women who use birth control, had you ever taken the time to observe Rush and absorb his takes on society?

Ours is a nation of diversity and factions held tenuously together by threads of common decency, fair expression and mutual respect. What is it in the body of Rush Limbaugh’s work that so enhances and strengthens those ties that politicians embrace him and businessmen like you support him? Or is it simply a case of when there is a vote to be won or a dollar to be made, people like you conveniently find a way to look the other way?

Karl Marx famously stated that capitalists, like you David Friend, will sell the rope with which they will be hung. Rush Limbaugh is evidence of that rope. He is also prima facie evidence of the kind of liberty, absent responsibility, that fosters a fractious nation that will always be less than the sum of its considerable parts.