Shaken & Stirred
Posted on October 16th, 2009
by Clark Stooksbury |
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here’s a couple of differing views on the Limbaugh/NFL business. Jay Nordlinger had a little tantrum about it:
Frankly, I’m so angry about this, I’m not sure I should write about it. I’m even a little shaken, and perhaps you are, too. Let me be blunt: The effort to keep Rush Limbaugh from participating in a bid on a football team was disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. For many years now, we have witnessed an attempt to banish Rush to the margins of American life. To make him a pariah in our society, a non-person.
Actually, Limbaugh flourishes at the margins. It’s anywhere else that he has trouble. Conor Friedersdorf noted that for someone complaining about the sting of being called a racist, he is freely tars others:
At the very least, he’s been bandying about the ‘r’ word rather frequently.
Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates? “He’s a racist,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “He’s an angry racist.”
Sonja Sotomayor? “She’s a bigot. She’s a racist,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “How can a president nominate such a candidate? And how can a party get behind such a candidate? That’s what would be asked if somebody were foolish enough to nominate David Duke or pick somebody even less offensive.”. . .
Liberals? “You know, racism in this country is the exclusive province of the left.”
The media circa January? “We’re witnessing racism all this week that led up to the inauguration. We’re being told that we have to hope he succeeds. That we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father’s black, because this is the first black president.”. . .
Oh, and don’t forget the NFL. As of this week, it is “an outpost of racism and liberalism.” (Strange that a league that is supposedly racist against white owner candidates has so many white owners.). . .
Filed under: Conservatism, media
One of NRO’s easiest niches is complaining about the left-wing political correctness that really can end careers. If AmConMag and friends complain more about establishment conservative hypocrisy than about the far stronger heft of the liberal establishment, it’ll give NRO less competition.
(I liked Daniel Larison’s recent point about Sotomayor critics: frivolous left-wing charges of racism often are mirrored by frivolous right-wing charges. )
But whatever Rush’s shallowness, it doesn’t justify the blatant fabrications that have targeted him.
Reading Jay Nordlinger is a pleasure that never disappoints, if unwittily. As with any Dittohead Fudd manning the burning deck of Rush defense whence all but they and his 15 million listeners had fled, he’s never cuter than when he’s pretending for the camera to be angry - as any one who has attempted arguing online with a true believer thus discovers: it’s like being the guy in the old vaudeville set-piece with his outstretched palm flush with his attacker’s forehead as the latter, the very picture of fashion in beanie propeller and flood pants, flails wildly at the air.
There’s also Jay’s cringemaking aw-shucks, corn-between-your-teeth hayseed shtick, and its et-tu-Reader? offshoot. The relentless, Alpha-to-Omega, woe-is-us, worst-of-times, conservative-as-24/7-victim-in-an-ungrateful-and-perfidious-world tone. The vox-reader-vox-Dei bit whereby each squeaky-wheel e-mailed anecdote becomes definitive proof that “liberals” (pretty much 95% of us, these days) get up in mornings for the sole purpose of spending the next 16 hours seeking out every opportunity to kick humble, noble right-wingers in the teeth (my favorite: a couple of snotty booksellers dissing Dittoheads became a pretext for an entire Nordlinger article, after veteran Limbaugh precedents, painting my whole industry as biased in its daily operations against conservative authors/customers). And, as always, the complete lack of any attempt to educate the non-movment-conservative reader new to this subjects. Where building an articulate step-by-step case against his targets might sit the throne, simple telegraphic references to the Usual Suspects (Ann Arbor), salted with ain’t-it-awful-Marge atmospheric moral melodrama and question-begging take the White House in regular landslides.
Funny thing, folks, to ape Jaybird populism: you sup long enough on the Gerber strained peas he serves up, you do run into the occasional chunk of pepperoni, in the current linked case in the kids-say-the-dangedest-things-item, and the alarums over “multiculturalist” censorship in Canada. Eet ees no eccident, Conrad, that in his fugitive bone-throwings to grownups, of all parties or none, allergic to the reigning agin’prop, he follows here as well the veteran usages of his EIB master: nobody claims Rush is not entertaining.
Let’s let Jay have the last word, after his other apparent sovereign master from the Early Reader precincts; if I were the author of See Spot Run, I think I’d sue in an NRO minute:
“Keep going, Rush, keep going.”
Just like Sister Jay said…
Beethoven led a troubled life, and yet so much genius comes through his music. Imagine a deaf guy playing a piano, so furiously that he breaks strings, but he can’t tell, because he is deaf.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZaTzSWqXCU
One is disappointed when the mass-production cable news goes lazy, and one after another commentator spouts variations of the same subjects, on the same evening. This is a symptom of being “intellectually fat and lazy”.
Certainly Rush Limbaugh gets a bit “fat and lazy” when he plays Paul Shanklin for a bit too long, or when he belabors the obvious racism inherent in the left.
Clark Stooksbury, in this article, is the opposite of “fat and lazy”, and although he may never have a chance in hell of understanding what Rush Limbaugh has said, still, Mr Stooksbury’s writing is an interesting exercise, similar to the deaf composer’s genius.
It seems to me that all the negative vibes this blowhard (Rush Hudson Limbaugh A.KA. Jeff Christie) has been spewing over these many years has come back to blow back on his face (A classic “Blow Back”). He always tries to give off the airs that he can have anything he wants but as we all witness those with more money and more influence tossed him aside like sack of potatoes and the ultimate insult was that it was done in public (money don’t buy you everything butterball).
Now of course he blames everyone else (Michael J. Fox, Perez Hilton, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Sonia Sotomayor, Hillary Clinton, Olympia Snowe, ESPN, NFL, the media, basically people of color, the handicapped, women and gays) when of course all you have to do is listen to his show and plainly hear his daily prejudices filled sermons. So NFL, I salute you decision, job well done. And to the whaling cry baby perched on his self made pedestal, quit your whining it was your own fault. Don’t we all feel better?
Rush’s attempt to become a NFL owner (or part-owner as it should be correctly noted) is another pathetic attempt on his part to be a part of the “mainstream”. He has and it seems he always will crave the approval of the powers that be and tries to be one of them. Yet he still doesn’t get it that what says on the radio precludes this from happening, and I’m not talking about any alleged or taken out of context quotes. He seems to think that people should view his everyday work as somehow separate from himself, as he is a different person away from the “golden microphone.” If that’s true, then what does he really believe in to begin with? This is what happens when you let “entertainers” set the guidelines of intellectual discourse. The truth is often times different than the shlock.
I think the central question for a lot of us on this issue is whether we love the truth more than we hate our enemies, and I hope the answer is that we do.
Rush has made a career of attacking his equals and his betters, and he’s done so in some pretty nasty ways. In spite of his talent, occasional insights, and the fact that he attacks people I dislike from time to time, I have absolutely zero use for him. I find his brand of conservatism lame, anti-intellectual, morally retarded (especially on foreign policy issues), and petty.
Nevertheless, he tried to spend some of his hard-earned money in a way he thought would be satisfying, and then the TV networks lied about him to prevent it from happening. That just stinks. A “fact check” session that is limited to cruising wikipedia and running the most offensive quote you find is tantamount to lying, and that’s a crime against a citizen. That isn’t cool, not even if it happens to Rush.
It is not just that I disagree with Mr Stooksbury, but I don’t believe he knows what he is talking about.
But if I explain in too great a detail, then AMCONMAG will simply delete my comments.
That’s why there seems to be a shortage of conservative feedback here.
This is my favorite liberal masquerading as conservative website and Stookie is my favorite commentator. The link he uses is run by Manhattan pinkos. Sniping at Rush, Palin, the right wing blogosphere is the same as you can see at Daily Kos or HuffPo.
By the way we had snow for the first time ever in October and it made me reminisce about those “right wingers who deny global warming are kooks” items that Stookie wrote so well and often. Haven’t heard him bring that up lately though.
The NFL decides who becomes an owner not the other way around.
All this blowhard (Rush Hudson Limbaugh A.KA. Jeff Christie) has to offer is his money and his opinions, which in my opinion are on the fringes of racism (one mans opinion). There are many more groups biding for the Rams, not just his group. Lets face it there are more men with money that will gladly fill the slot and the Rams will win or lose depending on how well the team works together and not on whether or not Rush is an owner.
As for Vick, well he is a player (he has talent not like you, Rush or I, unless you are a NFL player?) and he served his time and the NFL decided we live in the land of second chances, so why not (I personally don’t like it but, oh well). Life has never been fair (NEWS FLASH!)
Now as to the “Free Speech” argument, I guess many of you like myself heard Rush on Thursday “Almost in tears”, priceless. But the last two days he now is in his normal ranting and will continue until someone surpasses him, “Free Speech” continues, so quit your whining.
http://www.chasingevil.org/2009/10/rush-limbaugh-in-his-own-words.html
Rush will not sue because he knows they will file a counter compliant and he will be deposed and like Nixon he knows that the tapes will sink him. For so many years he has spent his time on the radio mis-labeling and/ or mis-characterizing others. Poor little “self-centered” Rush, no out except creating the myth that everyone is out to get him. Sorry sucka you can only yourself to blame for your idiot comments. He finally had his judgment day where the NFL wins and tubby loses. Tee, hee….