Rush Limbaugh sort of apologized for being a vile, lying, cretinous bastard, which is to say a proud member of the Conservative Movement. In the course of that apology he continued to distort reality and consequently implied that that his cretinous and vile lies and language we're, in fact, the result of the target of his hate-filled lying and vile nonsense. Some see this as a step in the right direction; others think, rightly in my opinion, that the response is simply one more example of the shameless lying and vileness without which the "culture war" could not continue.
And this is, I think, the point that has to be emphasized: Limbaugh constructed a lie and then became enraged about his lie and consequently attacked an innocent human being in the vilest way he could think of. That he was telling one lie after another is obvious. As one example, there is no correlation between the number of times anyone has sex and the amount of birth control pills needed. It's not, in other words, like condoms.
The fact of the matter is that there has never been a "culture war" in this country but rather a bunch of dishonest, vile, and contemptuous conservatives who fear freedom and liberty used one lie after another to whip up a minority of the population.
This isn't, I know, news. It does, sort of, help to remember that the only way the Right wins is to lie in the vilest and most obvious way possible.
The right-wing feeds on hatred and fear, and the only way to keep people afraid and mad is to make up stuff about their fellow human beings. Where Limbaugh made a mistake is that it's best to go after groups that your target audience doesn't know personally, or at least doesn't know that they know, like undocumented workers, or welfalre recipients or even minorities in general. Almost everyone knows a female on birth control, much harder to lie about people you know, and might even know well, or could be your wife, daughter, even mom (although most of us would prefer not to know about that).
ReplyDeleteMaybe (although the latter point is clearly true) but I think that it is becoming increasingly obvious that the percentage of Americans who support the "culture war" is below the crazification factor of 27 and, indeed, is every day shrinking. There is no way, for example, that Brooks and Will would be mocking the cultural warrior wing of the "Movement" unless it was now clearly understood that it was a millstone around the Party's neck. Even better, it seems to me, is the equally obvious fact that the Neoliberal economic policy, of deregulation and no taxes on the rich, doesn't work. I am moderately optimistic that between Limbaugh, SAntorium, and Romney the utter idiocy of the various threads of right Neoliberalism are coming unwound.
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