Rush and All Us Disciples

Rush and Disciple, originally uploaded by Wazdat!.

A Lesson On How To Drink The Koolaid

Rush and Sean! Limbaugh and Hannity both! In the SAME ROOM!

Uggh! Get out the Febreeze!

This past Wednesday I held my nose and viewed my taping of from the day before of "Hannity & Colmes." You see, yesterday l was going to stop at my usual 1 hour of O'Reilly (today is a "Hannity" day, tomorrow is an "O'Reilly" day), but then I heard that after O'Reilly, The Big Guy was coming to speak with good ol' Sean!

Well, I just couldn't wait to see this spectacular! Two of the greatest minds of the Jurassic Era in exultant communion together! And with Alan Colmes safely restrained so he couldn't hurt himself, the two great masters almost fell into each others arms tossing pearls of wisdom from out of their porcine snouts!

And what pearls! Lend an ear! Here's El Rushbo's version on the growth of talk radio!

"And the business has gotten bigger. The universe of audience has gotten bigger. And it coincides with a triumph of conservatism as a way of life for more and more in America. So it's had real meaning, too, in addition to just being fun."

He had this to say about "liberal radio":

" But still, people still ask. And it's fascinating to me to watch liberal radio attempt -- they think, I think, that you just announce you're going to start, and you'll get 20 million people, and so forth. I find it fascinating they cannot make themselves a commercial success. They're already now out begging their listeners to send in money... (laughing)

(laughing) HANNITY: Yes.

RUSH: ... doing the NPR rip-off.

Right.

RUSH: And I don't think they have, as liberals, the slightest understanding of the commercial aspects of the success that it takes in radio, particularly talk radio. They're in funding, and donations, and stealing money from little boys and girls clubs and so forth -- not stealing it, but having strange transactions go on there and so forth. You look at them and, for a moment, you almost feel sorry for them. Then you realize, "No, they don't exist." And they don't really -- they don't pose a threat. I mean, they don't have an understanding of what works on radio. They don't understand about how the business works. They have no business model whatsoever. They got a bunch of political activists to put it together rather than businesspeople. It's just fascinating to watch this thing flow on. But the most amazing thing about it is to watch how it is portrayed as a success by those who champion it elsewhere in the media. "

Well " El Rushbo," you don't see the full picture! Good ol' Dubya has helped expand that universe a little bit bigger than you think! You see, after the Iraq fiasco where 2000 of our young men died, not to mention the 100, 000 innocent lives taken, the attempt on Social Security, destroying our economy, FEMA'S Hurricane Katrina fiasco, the Valerie Plame scandal, the DeLay indictments, and with Dubya's resulting high esteem from all these things, one can say that the demographics for talk radio have slightly changed.

In the blue states, and certainly with the Republicans beginning to alienate many of their faithful, I believe that "liberal radio" has a solid market. And it's OK if many of the new stations are in the hinterlands. That's where they can entrench. And the big cities will come. Our talk radio is here to stay! Meanwhile there is SIRIUS Left, XM Satellite, and millions upon millions of computers with cable hookup; all with live Air America feeds full of Al Franken and Randi Rhodes, Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller podcasts to slice Rush up like the fat piece of baloney that he is. And by the way, Rush; it's nothing like NPR which wants to remain a traditional, balanced news outlet with no ox to gore. We have a point of view. We choose to be confrontational.

It's funny that El Rushbo mentioned the regard he had for school given that his families as he claims were lawyers:

"My reason for liking radio was two-fold: I love music, and I hated school. And I hated school from second grade on.''

Of course, you hated school Rush! That requires INTELLECT!

And of course, he'll defend his hero - Dubya!

"But I'll tell you, the way that George Bush has been dealt with, it borders on Nixonian the way the personal disgust and hatred is for him, not just by the Washington, D.C., culture, but now mainstream -- the base I describe as the new kook base that they have -- literally filled with uncontrollable rage and hatred."

What Rush meant was that the oafish serfs must not rebel against their "beneficent" masters. Of course, he forgot that Bush and Nixon had a few things in common, like both administrations had the heaviest taints of corruption that lead to destabilizing scandal. But then, it seems that what with Katrina Kronyism, Plamegate, DeLaygate, and Abramoffgate, this "gated" community loves to engage in scandal almost as a holiday tradition.



Rush went on to show how enlightened the right was, and how poor leftist intellect and ideas were!

We on the left spent the entire Dubya era fending off some major offensives on the middle class, and trying to corral right-wing criminals who did serious damage to our government.

I think the people pretty much know who the good guys are and how morally bankrupt the Republicans are.

But Rush is right on one thing. We have to start defining to America who we are. After all, they are making it easy for us. We are the opposite of what they are.

They started a war on a lie. We offer honest government.

They wanted to pillage Social Security. We offer a sane readjustment of what is our birthright, and a comfort in old age.

They are willing to bargain away American jobs for cheaper labor abroad. We want American jobs to stay at home!

With the Patriot Act threatening to take our freedoms away, we promise to preserve our freedom.

In place of a phony war on terrorism, we would go after the real perpetrators and deal with the root causes of terrorism, which would require a new foreign policy, one that would not deal with the world as groups of haves and have-nots.

They want to treat the earth as if it had infinite resources. We know that the well will go dry, and only adapting new, cleaner, more abundant resources will help.

Ahh! But Rush and Sean were more than savants on that day.

Rush knows all about Democrats you see:

“RUSH: Well, I think it's just a -- the Democratic Party is stuck in the past. Their presumed glory years are Watergate and Iraq. And they can't look forward. They don't look forward. And what they're attempting to do here is relive these glory years by criminalizing or discrediting conservativism so that nobody will vote for it. If they can't beat us at the ballot box, we'll get the courts or the legal system to throw us out of office. And this -- I mean, Watergate, that was a nirvana. Sean, they were having live orgasms back then. (laughing)
And on the anniversaries of Watergate, they have live orgasms. (laughing) It was Vietnam. They're trying to create Iraq out of Vietnam. There are no similarities whatsoever. But those are their glory years. And so since they can't -- they really can't beat us at the ballot box. In the debate of ideas, in the arena of ideas, they do not win elections. They have to tell somebody things that they're not. And this is their only tactic, I think. And, of course, they have allies in the mainstream press who have the same animus for people like DeLay and Rove. And it's a unified effort to try to make this all happen.”

Amazing! Of course Rush would have to avoid seeing that people in the White House were committing treason in the Plame Case, much the same as Tricky Dick was committing any number of high crimes and misdemeanors back in the 70’s, but why let a few facts get the way of a good smear! As for Iraq and Vietnam? Well! Who cares if neither war was started for a good reason! Or that the public was being lied to by LBJ (a Democrat) and Tricky Dicky, or that hundreds of thousands of innocent lives are sacrificed on the altar of the Perfect Neocon Paradise! Can’t we benighted Dems see that “Freedom’s On The March?”

As for telling “somebody things that they're not” well, we were under the mistaken impression that if we told people that we are not warmongering liars intent upon setting up a neo-feudal state in this country, we might get some mileage in this country. Just our way of being down with the “folks” as O’Reilly might say! But we forgot, only O’Reilly, only “The Factor” can do that!

I got to admit I was a bit surprised that Rush didn’t march in lockstep with his führer when it came to the issue of Harriet Miers being on the Supreme Court. We thought we were supposed to LIKE her! But, you see, here’s where Rush let us all in on an all-important secret: not all Right-wingers are supposed to think alike!

“RUSH: Well, it's really -- it is tough. I mean, it's not my pick. I didn't get elected president. And I don't presume to think that the White House should do what I say. You know, my program's done for the American people, for the audience. My audience is not in Washington and it's not in the White House. I don't know if they listen. I don't know if they care what I say. Well, they may care what I say if it goes against them, but I don't have a direct line to them. But my point with this is, it's just so unnecessary. It's just -- it's such a pity. It needn't have happened, this particular choice. The thing that I think of -- people have asked me, "Well, Rush, how did this happen? This is a well-oiled White House. They don't make mistakes here. They come up, and they do everything as smooth as silk, and how did they botch this?" Now, the left is charting -- trying to chalk it up to Rove and Plame. And I don't think that has anything to do with it, or Andy Card. I think it has to do with a misunderstanding among some of the White House over who the conservative constituency is. They think it's a single-issue group of people based on abortion. And I think they thought that, if they just get a candidate out there that can people can be persuaded to believe is going to do the right thing on Roe vs. Wade, that they would have the base in their back pocket and they could move on. And I just – I think they misunderstand that, because the conservative movement's not monolithic. It's not made up of single-issue people. Some of them are, but there are a lot more people who have far more interest than just one issue. And even, you know, where abortion's concerned, I -- you know, pro- abortion, anti-abortion, Roe vs. Wade is bad law. I know a lot of people who are all right with abortion who think that Roe vs. Wade is bad law. And the reason it's bad law is because seven judges decided on their own to see that the Constitution says, "Yes, there's a right to abortion," when it doesn't say that. Now, if nine men, a majority of nine men and women in robes, lawyers, can say, "Yep, I see this in the Constitution, and therefore it's the law of the land," then the Constitution's irrelevant.”

Or, could it be Rush, that the only one doing any thinking in the White House was ol’ Turdblossom? And when did you last let out the pro-choice conservatives to see the sunshine?

And Roe v. Wade is not bad law Rush. It was based on the finding in Griswold vs. The Commonwealth of Connecticut that asserted a “right to privacy” based on a preponderance of Constitutional law. But heaven knows we can’t be individuals if we are all to be happy consumers right Rush?

Rush ended this valuable lesson by giving me (and all of the rest of you benighted viewers) the direction I must travel in. He did this in the context of making presidential diagnoses for 2008:

“RUSH: It's early. You know, this is not -- there's somebody -- see, the danger with mentioning names is that you hurt the feelings of people that you leave out. And I'm leaving -- I'm going to leave some people out because of time constraints, but when I hear George Allen speak, there's a part of me, "Yes, rah-rah." There's some people in the House -- I know they're not running for president -- Mike Pence -- there's some people there that are doing some great work. They need to be encouraged. They need to be -- I think the biggest problem with the Republican Party is the same thing with the Democrats. And Dick Morris -- everybody's obsessed with this great middle. "We've got to somehow appeal to the middle." So Republicans think they've got to be pro-choice and moderate on other social issues. If you look at the Republicans that win elections, they're conservatives.”

So here I was in blissful ignorance thinking that I was alright living in the center, a proud denizen of the great middle class, but no! I have to be a radical! There’s no room in Rush’s America for a Weiker, a McCain, or a Spector. We all have to be radicals. Of course, Rush would prefer us all to be radical conservatives like him but I’ve a feeling he wouldn’t like the choice I’d make.


Rush teaching the children.

Hannity & Colmes 10/20/05