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Years ago, about the time Rush Limbaugh’s radio show was ‘going
national’ he said something controversial that was legally challenged, but he
could not confirm the allegation he made. Since he didn’t have any credentials,
he changed his billing from Political Commentator to Political Entertainer.
There are other better-qualified conservative spokespeople. Let’s hope the
demand for entertainers behaving badly
has run its course. In case you’ve missed the hullabaloo about the Michael J. Fox pro-stem
cell research political ad that Limbaugh’s juvenile tirade elevated beyond a
few states to world wide viewing, here are a few links for your convenience. ABC Interview http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/story?id=2613377&page=1 CBS Interview http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/26/eveningnews/main2128188.shtml?CMP=ILC-SearchStories MSNBC Countdown’s
Keith Olbermann on Limbaugh’s Fact Less Bad Behavior http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/story?id=2613377&page=1 Rush Limbaugh not only twice characterized Fox as ‘faking it’ but
alleged that he was ‘shilling’ for DEMS. Fact:
Fox did a similar ad in 2004 for GOP Sen. Alan Specter, who has recovered from
treatment for Stage
IVB Hodgkin's lymphoma cancer and is a vocal supporter of
stem cell research. In 2004 Specter was
seriously challenged for reelection and the war hawk no-dissenters RNC didn’t
support him because he was too moderate. Fox said in the CBS interview that he respected those who disagreed in
principle with stem cell research, but in the ABC interview he criticized Pres.
Bush’s veto of stem cell research as the first and only veto in his 6 years as
president, after it was passed by both houses of Congress Thanks to Limbaugh and other right-winger bullying, the issue of stem
cell research has become a lens through which to view the differences in
attitude about hope and the greater common good that partisan politics has exploited
and stereotyped, too often via inflammatory language. KwC Limbaugh Outfoxed OpEd
by William Saletan, Washington Post, Sunday, October 29, 2006; B02 I once had a friend
who listened to Rush Limbaugh three hours a day. He was a Republican operative.
He sat in my apartment, wearing headphones, while I worked. He swore that if I
put on the headphones for 10 minutes, I'd be hooked. So I put them on. Inside the headphones
was another world. Everyone in this world thought the same way, except for
liberals, and they were only cartoon characters, to be defeated as though in a
video game. In the real world, my friend was unemployed and had been staying
with me, rent-free, for two months. But inside the headphones, he could laugh
about welfare bums instead of pounding the pavement. I thought about that
last week when Limbaugh went after his latest target: Michael J. Fox. The
actor, who has Parkinson's disease, has been appearing in ads for candidates
who support government-funded embryonic stem cell research. The ads promote
such research as a potential cure for Parkinson's and other diseases. On Monday, Limbaugh
played one of the ads for his audience. "In this commercial, he is
exaggerating the effects of the disease," he said of Fox. "He is
moving all around and shaking. And it's purely an act. This is the only time I
have ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he
has. . . . This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take
his medication or he's acting, one of the two." Where had Limbaugh
seen Fox? "I've seen him on 'Boston Legal,' I've seen him on a number of
stand-up appearances," he said. He pointed to Fox's autobiography. Fox
"admits in the book that before a Senate subcommittee . . . he did not
take his medication, for the purposes of having the ravages and the horrors of
Parkinson's disease illustrated, which was what he has done in the
commercials," Limbaugh charged. In the book, Fox
explains his life in the real world -- the world his body inhabits, as opposed
to the make-believe world Limbaugh saw on television. Fox describes how, during
"the years I spent promoting the fiction that none of this was actually happening
to me," he learned "to titrate medication so that it kicked in before
an appearance or performance. . . . I did everything I could to make sure the
audience didn't know I was sick. This, as much as anything, had, by 1998,
become my 'acting.' " When he came out of the Parkinson's closet, Fox
recalls, he chose "to appear before the subcommittee without medication.
It seemed to me that this occasion demanded that my testimony about the effects
of the disease . . . be seen as well as heard." Here we have two
completely different notions of reality. Fox's job is to portray characters in
movies and on television. For him, Parkinson's was an invasion of the fake
world by the real one. The medication, designed to hide this from the audience,
became part of the fiction. In going off his meds, he was dropping the act. Limbaugh's life story
has gone the other way. His job is to explain politics, a branch of nonfiction.
But for him, the fake world has overtaken the real one. He thinks "Boston
Legal" is reality. Anything that doesn't match this must be
"acting." If you go off your meds, you're not revealing your
symptoms. You're "portraying" them. Radio, television and
the Internet greased Limbaugh's descent into fantasy. Years ago, a profile
described him "holed up in his New York apartment with Chinese takeout and
a stack of rented movies." In another profile, he "complained that he
has virtually no social life." Click the video links on his Web site, and
you can peer into his world. He sits in a soundproof studio. He never has to go
outside. In Limbaugh's world,
"there never was a surplus" under President Bill Clinton. AIDS
"hasn't made that jump to the heterosexual community," and cutting
food stamps is fine because recipients "aren't using them." Two years
ago, he said the minimum wage was $6 or $7 an hour. Last year, he said gas was
$1.29 a gallon. Limbaugh has
particular trouble distinguishing reality from entertainment. The abuse at Abu Ghraib "looks just like
anything you'd see Madonna or Britney Spears do on stage," he told his
listeners. Last month, he defended ABC's Sept. 11 movie against the document on
which it purportedly relied: "The 9/11 commission report, for example,
says, well, some of these things didn't happen the way they were portrayed in the
movie. How do they know that?" Last year, Limbaugh,
who used a tailbone defect to get out of the Vietnam War draft, accused a
Democratic candidate of having served in Iraq "to pad the resume." He
charged veterans -- including former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.), who lost his
legs and an arm in Vietnam -- with trying "to hide their liberalism behind
a military uniform . . . pretending to be something that they are not."
When war is just a television show, a uniform is just a costume. Liberalism is
real; losing your limbs is a pretense. Which brings us back
to stem cells. Limbaugh says Fox's ads dangle a prospect of imminent cures
"that is not reality." He's right. But the ads convey another
reality: a man dying of a disease that might be cured more quickly if the
government dropped its restrictions on research funding. Limbaugh dismisses
this as a "script" being followed by Fox's "PR people" and
"the entertainment media." Script? Entertainment? This is life and
death. I have another friend.
He has Parkinson's. I've seen him on good days and bad days. That's how I know
Fox isn't faking. My friend doesn't see the destruction of embryos as a
dangerous price to pay for stem cell research. I do. But if you worry about the
embryos, you had bloody well better look into the eyes of the people dying of
these diseases. You had better ask yourself whether slowing research that might
save them is an acceptable price for your principles. If you can't -- if all
you can see is "acting" -- then you need more help than they do.
Fox's disease can only take your body. Limbaugh's can take your soul. William
Saletan covers science and technology for Slate, the online magazine at www.slate.com. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701475.html |
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