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Limbaugh's vulgarity not so bad as his mass power

by smkovalinsky | August 19, 2009 at 06:46 pm

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Banrey Frank made an extremely valid point, and an important one, when he refused to engage in a debate Tuesday with a woman at a Town Hall meeting. The woman held a Hitler poster and asked Frank why he continued on with a "Nazi regime". Of course one does not engage in a debate with such ignorance, such embarrassing naivite; and that such mean-spirited stupidity has come to the fore is a national embarrasment and a cultural disaster.
I am not so concenred with the predicable and typical banter which Limbaugh followed up with: What disturbs me is his - and his cronies' - power to mislead the ignorant and the unthinking. That he has a certain satirical wit is not missed by me, nor does it go unappreciated. I can see the machismo, the male vanity, the audacity of vulgarity which is not masquereding as something else, but is proclaiming its right to be vulgar and bigoted. But my feeling breaks out and changes when I see what he has done in the name of ratings, in the service of professional advancement and celebrity glory. It is the folly of whipping a mass of people into a frenzy over a phantom theory: That Obama somehow parallels Hitler; that his ideology is a resurgance of fascism and Nazism. This is no longer satirical, nor cynical, nor the other side's right to speak its mind: It is a relentless disinformation campaign which I wager will ultimately have disastrous consequences.

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Jane Ingles (not verified)

at 05:56 on August 20th, 2009

Rush Limbaugh is an ass and should be removed from his radio show immediately. The Barney Frank joke re Uranus was in poor taste and Mr. Frank deserves a sincere apology from Limbaugh.

smkovalinsky

at 06:03 on August 20th, 2009

I agree: Frank was making a valid and noble point, which Limbaugh not only did not have the dignity to respect, but had the gall to turn into a bigoted bashing of Frank, in a most crude way. But this is precisely why Limbaugh's fans love him! He proclaims the rights of illogic and vulgarity everywhere.