Rush Limbaugh Attacks Tim Wise, August 17, 2009
August 18, 2009, filed under Enemy Attacks; 2 Comments.
Tags: deceptive data, indigenous persons, Obama, Rush Limbaugh, slavery, Tea Party, white denial,
white racial resentment
Rush Limbaugh attacks Tim Wise, August 17, 2009. Check it out! And then read Tim’s reply.
Fact-Checking and Correcting Rush Limbaugh (Or, Reflections on the Easiest Thing I’ll Do All Day)
Posted on August 18, 2009
Today is a glorious day indeed. First, our youngest daughter began kindergarten this morning, amidst great excitement and enthusiasm, and was walked to her classroom by her big sister (in 2nd grade), who felt especially “adult” for getting to do that, I’m sure.
And secondly, because yesterday afternoon, Rush Limbaugh attacked me on air. The afterglow, as they say, is still with me.
Limbaugh, apparently peeved at my comments on CNN the night before — where I had discussed the role of racism in much of the hostility being witnessed in the town hall meetings — couldn’t help himself. Among other things, he called me a liar and a dunderhead, who wasn’t qualified to write a book. The first of these is funny, coming from him, and the last of these is too, considering that his book was ghost-written. Now, as for “dunderhead?” Well, I had to look that one up. It apparently means: “A nonsense word often used by OxyContin addicts to describe their political adversaries.” Who knew?
Anyway, his diatribe was really quite telling.
First, he was angered by my referencing him, and claiming that he had recently said that the President hates white people.
“This is the kind of lying that passes for reporting and wise commentary on the left. I never said Obama hates white people,” bellowed Rush in reply.
So, wanting to be accurate, I went back and checked. I want to be precise, after all. Turns out, Rush is half right. He didn’t say those words, that way. Glenn Beck did of course, a few weeks ago, but not Rush. What Limbaugh did say, however, and the statement to which I had been referring, was this, from May 29:
“How do you get promoted in the Barack Obama administration? By hating white people…make white people the new oppressed minority…and they’re (the Republican Party) going right along with it ‘cuz they’re shutting up, moving to the back of the bus. They’re saying “I can’t use that drinking fountain, OK! I can’t use that restroom, OK!”
Now, let’s process that shall we? First, the point I had been making on CNN — that radio talk show hosts have been deliberately playing on white racial resentments and anxieties in their attacks on Obama — is made even more convincingly by the actual quote, than by the version I had offered. If anything, saying that whites are going to be the new oppressed minority, and that Republicans are literally going to suffer the indignities of segregation, is even more over the top than a silly off-the-cuff broadside about the President hating white people.
Secondly, the first part of the actual quote — which is the part I had been thinking of — actually does suggest that Obama hates white people. After all, if the President only hires people who do (you know, like that notorious white-basher, Tim Geithner), then what is Rush saying about the President? That he hires anti-white bigots just so he can argue with them and convince them of the errors of their ways? Or are we to assume that Obama himself must harbor the same hatreds? Honestly, to weasel out of the implications of his comment here, would be like arguing, “I never said that priest was a pederast. But you know what? If you want to be his friend, you’d best have some hot tips on where to pick up children.”
Rush then denied calling Obama Hitler: an argument he felt compelled to make due to my mention of people in the town halls who have indeed portrayed Obama as Hitler, as in, on their signs. And again, in his denial he is engaging in a half-truth. No one has ever said he, or anyone else, literally called Obama by the name, Hitler. The point is, he, and others, have been regularly seeking to compare Obama to Hitler and the Nazis. And so, on August 6, we have the following from Rush:
“Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate. His Cabinet only met once. One day. That was it. Hitler said he didn’t need to meet with his Cabinet; he represented the will of the people. He was called the messiah. He said the people spoke through him.”
And this:
“It is Obama who is manufacturing right from the White House, sending out his brownshirts to head up opposition to genuine American citizens who want no part of what Barack Obama stands for.”
And this:
“Obama’s got a health care logo that’s right out of Adolf Hitler’s playbook.”
And this:
“Oh, another similarity. Obama is asking citizens to rat each other out like Hitler did.”
Again, to deny the implications of what Rush is saying here would be like arguing: “I’m not saying you’re Jeffrey Dahmer. I’m just saying that, like Dahmer, you like to eat people and keep their body parts in the freezer. That’s all I’m saying.”
Finally, Rush had the verbal equivalent of an exploding aneurysm at my closing point from the show, wherein I noted that to claim you want to take the country back to “the way the founders envisioned it” is inherently disturbing, because, after all, they envisioned a white supremacist state.
