Torturing The Wurlitzer
David Brock’s new site Media Matters for America is great. I highly recommend that everyone read it regularly. For obvious reasons he has a flawless ear for the tunes of the Mighty Wurlitzer.
The best thing they’re doing, among many great things, is that finally, FINALLY, somebody is listening, transcribing and publishing the vomit inducing, delusional rants of Rush Limbaugh. This is such a beautiful thing that it brought tears to my eyes.
They listened to each show from March 15th to April 29th, a mere six weeks, and transcribed a long list of incendiary, divisive, racist, bigoted and mysogynistic remarks. Some of them are so depraved that not only can I completely understand why Stern is outraged at being picked out for obscenity, but I now understand where the wing-nuts in charge of prisons and POW’s in our culture get permission to exploit others with their sick little S&M fantasies.
Along with his usual puerile ranting about Femi-Nazi’s and revealing castration fantasies, it seems that Rush, like good Catholic Rick Santorum, is quite fascinated by the whole bestiality thing. In Rush’s case he takes in in a different direction, seeing the threat of girl-on-dog sex as the tittillating image he has to share with his feverishly wanking dittoheads:
11)Well, Rich Lowry has a column today, National Review Online, and Time magazine has just discovered that stay-at-home moms are women who have made legitimate choices to stay home and raise their young children — a cover story. Time magazine has headlined the case for staying home, and the magazine, according to Lowry, reports without sneering or condescension, the trend toward more new mothers leaving the workforce. Yes, it’s a trend. It started years ago when the feminist movement decided that their best friends were going to be German shepherds. You know. So that’s — well, it’s true. You go to the right airports and you can see it.
You see a lot of strange things when you’re on the nod. Pop enough little blue babies in the cab and you’re hallucinating hot Girl-on-Shepard action at airports.
His adorable characterization of Hillary’s “testicle lockbox” must surely make all those “decency advocates” who were shocked by Janet Jackson’s nipple sit up and take notice.
17) Now if Hillary does become Kerry’s VP, will she have to change her positions to be on the same page with Kerry or will Kerry have to change his? (laughter) Don’t forget that testicle lock box, folks. (laughter) Just as we haven’t talked about it in awhile does not mean (laughter) that it’s — that it’s been buried. [4/15/04]
18) If I were Bob Woodward, I would be on a lookout for Mrs. Clinton and her testicle lockbox, because she has just been snookered, like every other Liberal, by believing what Woodward says is in his book in these interviews, as opposed to what’s actually in these books, or this book, because it’s exactly what she claims she needs in an administration. [4/21/04]
That truly is what honor and dignity are all about. As I said, no wonder Howard Stern is pissed. (And no wonder Rush defended him.)
But, the really disturbing thing about Rush’s rants are the eliminationist rhetoric and charges of treason against the Democrats. This has been going on for more than TEN Years, day after day after day. It’s only a matter of time before somebody gets assassinated.
24) I’m going to tell you is what’s good for Al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party in this country today. That’s how you boil this down. And it doesn’t have to be Al Qaeda. What’s good for terrorists is good for John Kerry. All you got to do is check the way they react. [3/15/04]
26) They [Democrats] celebrate privately this attack in Spain. [3/16/04]
27) I mean, if you wonder — if you want the terrorists running the show, then you will elect John Kerry, who is a bed brother with this guy who just won election in Spain. [3/18/04]
28) I’m telling you, we’re in the midst of a huge liberal crackup. They are so motivated by the quest for power. They are so motivated by rage and hatred, that they are not in power. And they focus that on Bush. That they have aligned themselves unwittingly — I’m going to grant them that — with those who intend harm on this country. [3/24/04]
29) You don’t hear the Democrats being critical of terrorists. In fact, you hear the Democrats saying, “We’ve got to find a way to get along with them.” [4/5/04]
30) Senator [Ted] Kennedy, a simple question. Does it please you to learn who your friends are? Does it excite you, Senator Kennedy, to learn that the militant, firebrand, murderer of American civilians and military personnel is on your side, Senator Kennedy? Does it encourage you? Does it invigorate you? Does it inspire you, Senator Kennedy, to know that a murdering Al Qaeda-related terrorist has taken up your argument for use against his enemy? How does that make you feel, Senator Kennedy? Does it embarrass you? Because it should. Or does it probably excite you and think you’re making headway now. You’ve got the enemy aligned with you. [4/8/04]
33) [Speaking about Democrats] I don’t know who they are, I don’t know what they believe, but I can’t relate. I can’t possibly understand somebody who hates this country, who was born and raised here. I don’t understand how you hate this Constitution. I don’t understand how you hate freedom. I don’t understand how you hate free markets, but that’s who elites are, because freedom and free markets challenge their power. It’s the only thing I can come up with. I know it’s much more insidious and hideous than that, but I still can’t relate to it. [3/16/04]
34) The Democrats believe that the presence of the US military is what makes the world dangerous. The Democrats, liberal Democrats in this country, believe, and have for a long time, that the U.S. military is the focus of evil, is the primary agent provocateur for all of this. That if we weren’t the way we are, the terrorists wouldn’t hate us. And if we weren’t as big as we are, if we weren’t as powerful as we are, if we weren’t as decadent — whatever. Well, they won’t say “decadent,” because they support that. [3/18/04]
35) [Daschle parody]: Hi and welcome back to the Tom Daschle Show… The country is suffering, and, ah — and we’re happy about that here at the Tom Daschle Show because it’s — while it’s bad for the country, it’s great for our party, and that’s what’s important. [4/5/04]
[…]
40) This is why, folks, you cannot, we cannot entrust liberals with the defense of this country. They will not do it. They will not defend the American military. They will cut and run every time. They will not defend freedom. They will not defend this country. [4/7/04]
41) The Liberals put their party and their quest for power above national interests. They wouldn’t join with Reagan during the Cold War. Defended the Soviets. Tried to make Gorbachev the hero of the world. Iraqi freedom, George W. Bush. Then we had the situation down with the Contras in Nicaragua. Democrats did everything they could to support the Contras and their client state, the Soviet Union. We’ve got Iraqi Freedom. [4/13/04]
42) These people have become the mainstream thought — thinkers, generators of the Democratic Party. It’s who they are. They hate this country. They hate the military of this country. [4/15/04]
Day after day after day millions of people listen to this stuff. I can’t do it for more than a few minutes before losing my cool. I doubt that Howie Kurtz and other Limbaugh apologists who consider him “mainstream” ever listen to him either. They just accept him as mainstream because people like the Vice President of the United States appear on his show as if it’s perfectly acceptable to be associated with him:
Kurtz: Has Tom Daschle lost a couple of screws? Did the normally mild-mannered senator accuse Rush Limbaugh of inciting violence? He came pretty darn close. There were cameras there. You can watch the replay.
We can understand that Daschle is down, just having lost his majority leader’s job and absorbed plenty of blame for this month’s Democratic debacle.
What we can’t understand is how the South Dakotan can suggest that a mainstream conservative with a huge radio following is somehow whipping up wackos to threaten Daschle and his family.
Has the senator listened to Rush lately? Sure, he aggressively pokes fun at Democrats and lionizes Republicans, but mainly about policy. He’s so mainstream that those right-wingers Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert had him on their Election Night coverage.
Somebody ought to ask old Tom and Tim about that, too. Have they listened to this tripe? I’m almost more afraid if they have than if they haven’t.
But, it also seems to me that there is fear on the Right that they aren’t cracking “the mainstream” effectively enough. Perhaps it’s because the product they are shilling for is so incredibly defective that they are unable to completely co-opt even the corporate media. Just this last week, Dick Cheney exhorted a bunch of Republicans to watch FOXNews because it is more “accurate.” Ralph Reed said this week-end:
Twenty-five years ago, most people got their news from ABC, CBS or NBC,” Reed said in a speech Friday night to the Nevada Republican Party’s state convention. “Fortunately, that is no longer the case. The gatekeepers of dominant media have lost their monopoly on information.”
Reed told the crowd of about 250 Republicans that he has not watched a newscast of a major network in years.
“I get in the car in the morning and listen to Rush Limbaugh. On the way home, I listen to Sean Hannity. At night I watch Fox News,” he said.
That explains a lot. Of course, it’s nonsense. But it will be key to them getting out their brainwashed base. Otherwise, some Christian fundamentalists might see disturbing pictures of Americans doing icky sexual things to naked Arabs or the sight of flag draped coffins would make patriots start to question whether the cost is worth the gain in this vague “WOT” in Iraq.
In that sense, Rush Limbaugh is as mainstream in America as Hitler was mainstream in Germany, circa 1932. He’s the voice of a huge constituency of the Republican Party — the Party that holds all three branches of government right now —the Party that is bankrupting the country and fighting unnecessary wars for reasons they cannot explain to the American people.
But, his ugly talk still operates just a little bit under the radar in terms of specificity. I imagine the majority of people think they know what he is saying, but they don’t. Until you see it written down, you really don’t get just how vicious and crude it really is. His radio voice serves to make him sound somewhat friendly and funny. People think he is exaggerating for effect. Still, the message gets out, day after day. “Democrats are not real Americans like you.” This treasonous, unamerican picture of liberalism has seeped into the body politic so thoroughly that even liberals themselves have internalized this distorted version of themselves.
More than a decade of pounding away at our integrity has made many of us eschew the label of liberal, Democrat, feminist, civil libertarian etc. They may not have turned many of us into Republicans, but they’ve managed to turn a lot of us into Greens or independents by making the designation of “Democrat” shameful. We spend more time calling each other pussies and cowards than he does now. We are obsessed with changing ourselves instead of fighting them. We meekly take the blame for the nightmare that has descended on this country under Republican rule. They have already won half the battle by making us hate ourselves as much as we hate them.
I still maintain, however, that he and his ilk haven’t been able to eliminate the one thing we still have — reason. The faith based simpletons and cynics, whether it be Jerry Fallwell or Rush Limbaugh or Richard Perle can only count on reality being held at bay for so long. Death, terrorism, wars, joblessness, lack of healthcare, impoverished retirement — these things are real. You can tell people to watch the happy horseshit news on FOX and you can implore them to only listen to wingnut propaganda, but reality intrudes eventually. Unfortunately so much damage will have been done that we will probably never be the same.
And they are completely wrong about one thing. Rush says:
… these are the people that want to oust Bush. The people who remain skeptical of the fact that there is any difference between right and wrong, or good and evil. [3/17/04]
I am a liberal and a Democrat and I have no problem seeing the difference between right and wrong and good and evil. Bin laden is evil. Saddam was evil. Rush Limbaugh is evil.
See? Not a problem.
Update: A reader reminds me to give credit where credit is due to Orcinus for leading on this issue. Also, I should note that Joe Conason and Gene Lyons have been indispensible in exposing the right wing media machine along with many articles in Salon over the last few years. Still, it’s a big step forward to see a web site dedicated to exposing specific instances of Wurlitzer distortion on a daily basis, particularly Limbaugh. It will add tremendously to the debate.