In 2007, radio host Don Imus called the Rutgers women’s basketball team (then composed of eight black and two white players) a group of “nappy headed hos.” The women hadn’t done anything provocative — no claims that society needed to pay up so they could play sports, much less that a Catholic University should be denied religious liberty and coerced into paying for contraceptives. Imus was just being Imus — gratuitously insulting the women to try to be funny, just like he routinely insults people in the public eye to try to be funny. Sometimes he has a reason and sometimes he is funny, but many times he hasn’t and he’s not.
When Imus was fired by MSNBC and his radio station, WFAN in New York, many conservatives went to bat for him. What he’d said was condemnable, and it was condemned in very strong terms. But the punishment did not fit the crime: Nobody believed that Imus really thought the women were as he described them, and to destroy a career over a clumsy attempt at humor — one that was only marginally more offensive than Imus’s usual fare — would have been wildly disproportionate.
It wasn’t long before Imus had a national radio and TV gig again. And because he was still Imus, it also wasn’t long before he was using the program to take shots at all the fair-weather friends who instantly turned into pious critics the second the media pile-on against him began. They weren’t stand-up, solid guys — the kind Don Imus would have you believe Don Imus is.
So naturally, Imus — a recovering alcoholic and drug addict — ripped Rush Limbaugh this morning as a “fat, gutless, pill-popping loser.” Perfect. Of course, as Rush eloquently explained today in publicly apologizing, yet again, to Sandra Fluke, his error in judgment was to succumb to a temptation at odds with the personality fans have come to know, and the person friends have come to know, over the past 25 years: the temptation to resort to the base language of unfounded personal insult — the language that is the Left’s stock-in-trade and that Imus often seems unable to complete a sentence without. The post-Rutgers Imus, much like the pre-Rutgers Imus, is a well-trained house pet. He’s got down perfectly when you need to grovel, when you can afford to be sanctimonious, and which targets are safe for his bile-laced tirades. What a profile in courage.
Here’s the pathetic thing about this episode: We’ve been given the playbook and still we don’t see we’re being played. “Pick the target,” Saul Alinksy said, “freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.” So we’re talking about Rush, the target over which the Left obsesses because he is so effective — he is able to reach and to teach because, as he noted today, his good-natured humor can be biting and illuminating without being nasty. Meantime, it has long been the law of the United States that the existence of a right does not come with a companion right to make somebody else pay for it. And it has similarly long been our tradition, enshrined in our law, that government must respect the realm of conscience. It is President Obama’s purpose to eradicate these principles, to usher in a new order in which “rights” become not what government must refrain from doing to you but rather what government must do for you — meaning: what government may, of its choosing, confiscate from one group of Americans and redistribute to the Americans it favors, or, indeed, to others it prefers.
While Don Imus and the rest of the herd bleats over Rush, that is what is taking root. And if you don’t like it, prepare to be the next target.
Don Imus is quite the hypocrite, isn't he!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe are facing political war and the sooner we recognize that the better. External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe trouble here is that Limbaugh was just so stupid. Here is this hyper-entitled, narrow-minded political climber, earnestly trumpeting all the predictable themes without the slightest hint of irony. Student Fluke was just oh-so-pleased to Speak Truth To Power, never mind that she hadn't given five minutes thought to anything but her own opinions. If those.
You couldn't dial up a better parody. And the best Rush could do is the basest, more derogatory language. He wasn't misunderstood or misrepresented, he was just angry and insulting and dismissive. He was exactly what the Left claims of the whole Right.
The whole thing is rhetorical malpractice, a tragic waste of comic material.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusechernevik. we have to recognize this is false outrage by the left and not buy into that. You can disagree with Rush's use of language (heck, Rush disagrees with his use of language), but this "outrage" is false and and oh so one sided. When Sarah Palin or conservative women are attacked none of these offended feminists speak up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"When Sarah Palin or conservative women are attacked none of these offended feminists speak up."
Dude, try to temper your lame assertions with a modicum of credibility. This is Lisa Bennett, Communications Director for the (Planned Parenthood lovin' and NRO-detested) National Organization for Women, specifically on the issue of Palin and sexism:
"Listen, supposedly progressive men (ok, and women, too): Cut the crap! Stop degrading women with whom you disagree and/or don't like by using female body terms or other gender-associated slurs. OK? Can you do that, please? If you think someone's an idiot or a danger to the country, feel free to say so, but try to keep their sex out of it. Sexist insults have an impact on all women."
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Seems an awful lot like speaking up to me. Wise up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe left doesn't have a monopoly on outrage. I'm still waiting for the apologies from Bill Maher and David Letterman.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell said!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLimbaugh has a history of backing down when confronted with Alynskite tactics. Another fail for him. He should have moved aggressively against his attackers rather than back down and appologize.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"his good-natured humor can be biting and illuminating without being nasty."
Except in this incident, where Rush was incredibly nasty and neither "good-natured" nor humorous.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOh please! Get over it. He has apologized twice already. Move on.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI guess Rush has to commit sepuku on MSNBC to satisfy the left. And they would speak badly of him even if he did that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe goal of liberals, and many so called moderates, is to drive conservatives from the field. THis is why so many on our side are piling on Rush. It's not so much that they disagree with what he said, it's that this is an opportunity to silence him.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCan't disagree that Imus is a major jerk. Still, McCarthy writes: "Meantime, it has long been the law of the United States that the existence of a right does not come with a companion right to make somebody else pay for it." Well, the right of priests to deny an element of healthcare to women certainly forces said women, if they deem they need it, to purchase it using money. Thus, the priests' right to make it more difficult for folks to have recreational sex without worry of unwanted pregnancies is paid for by non-priests. Right? I also like McC's characterization of Rush's insults as merely an "error in judgment" that Rush "succumb(ed) to", that it was a "temptation at odds with the personality fans have come to know". This, I'm sure, comforts all Dittoheads by assuring them that, even though their hero calls a woman a naughty name (astonishingly, NRO, being public keepers of virtue, would not allow me to emply McCarthy's hero's own characterization) Rush, and the Dittoheads, are really the good ones in all of this.
Please, keep defending Rush, NRO. Makes you look real serious. BTW: the boycotters are crazy. Not only is boycotting a lame pursuit, but Rush, every time one of his utterances reaches outside his circle, helps elect Democrats, plain and simple.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHere's McCarthy's good friend Pam Geller on Ms. Fluke on her temerity to testify before congress and discuss contraceptives and insurance coverage:
"A 30-year-old poses as a 23-year-old, chooses a Catholic University to attend at $65,000 per year and can not afford ALL the birth control pills she needs… so she wants the US taxpayers to pay for her rampant sexual activity. By all accounts she is banging it five times a day. She sounds more like a prostitute to me. She must have an gyno bill to choke a horse (pun intended). Sl@t was a softball.
Obama calls her and tells Sandra Sl@t Fluke that her parents should be so proud of her.
He’s a p!mp.
Did he call the sole survivor of the Fogel family massacre?
He is morally bankrupt."
Yup it's the left that is using despicable tactics?
And Alinsky is such a thing with you nuts. Up until a few years ago, he was known for working to improve American ghettos (the nerve!) in the 30's and then got involved in the civil rights movement. But he is well known for getting people active in their community and politics (Dick Armey gave his book out to Tea Party activists. Are they Alinksyite radicals?).
Geller, Frank Gaffney, McCarthy. Peas in a pod.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNasty
Hey Doc,
Where was your outrage over ACORN (advising 'male managers' how to setup shop for underage illegal immigrant prostitutes)? Where was your outrage over Bill Mayer and David Letterman's comments about Sarah Palin? Pretty selective there with the simpish 'guilt by association' ploy, eh?
You're a gadfly. No one takes you any more seriously than they do a buzzing house fly.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Well-trained house pet" is right. But these days, "Well-trained liberal house pet" would be more right.
Imus is the pits. A toadying sycophantic limousine-liberal who thinks that an affectation of cynicism lends him some sort of ideologically countervailing cover. It doesn't.
He reminds of of Bill Maher back in his absurd "Politically Incorrect" days.
Moreover, Hannity's lame attempts to acquire some sort of "hip" cachet by befriending him are pathetic, and if Imus' lackey McGuirk had half a brain (which I'm not sure he does) he'd find himself another gig. Bernie may still be salvagable; Imus is a lost, unlamented cause.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI adore Rush. What surprised me about the amount of time he spent on Fluke last week is that he was prolonging this whole contrived contraception controversy. And, he was doing so right at the time when Santorum was trying to gain traction against the Progressive-seeming Romney.
And, it seems Rush may have been goaded ala Alinsky into responding by Fluke's highly incredible claims (e.g., $3,000 for contraception over her law school years).
“The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.” -- Saul Alinsky.
Darn it, Rush, you fell right into the trap!
And I say this out of love, Rush: you went too far with your choice of words (as you know). But alas, this administration is driving many of us rather crazy...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWow. Just wow. Andrew McCarthy must live in an alternative universe.
Rush Limbaugh is the very definition of nasty. He always has been and always will be.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis from the guy who defines cooperation as doing whatever Obama wants.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseProfessor Edgar Browning wrote a wonderful book and included the various kinds of income Americans benefit from. Most of us earn income via hard currency (a cashable pay check). But there is another kind of income called "in-kind" income whereas a person has financial gain via programs like TANF, pulbic housing, food stamps and Medicare/Medicaid. Women who benefit from having children out of wedlock are actually being paid for their services.
So what was Sandra Fluke asking the Georgetown University to do if not reimburse her, and her fellow female students, for the expense they incur giving away what some charge for? She was asking for an "in-kind" payment via health insurance benefits through costs to the university that will necessarily rise due to additional expense on the part of the insurance company, When you pay someone for having sex, either in currency, or "in-kind" payments, what does that make someone?
While I understand that Ms. Fluke seems to object to being called a perjorative, she had no trouble running down stop signs in her dash to appear on the show of a man, Ed Shultz, who has used the same perjorative against a conservative, and Catholic, Laura Ingraham. It seems Sandra Fluke's objections are selective, for if she truely believed that it was wrong to use that perjorative against women, she would apply that standard to ALL women, not just herself, and would not have appeared on the Ed Schultz show.
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