joe_cobol

The Rush Thing

Jack over at Ruminate This has the latest Rush Limbaugh news nailed.

...God only knows how it is that a person who in no way represents even the barest minimum Christian values of at least some of his right wing fundamentalist supporters has become the sort of icon that Rush Limbaugh seems to be to some of these people. In itself, the cultural divisiveness and class warfare that he has engaged in all of these years has always seemed somewhat at odds with the core values that one would expect to encounter in a truely conservative person, were one to look at that word "conservative" in it's most constructive light. Today we learn that, adding to this incongruity, he and his wife of 10 years, Marta, are going to divorce, ending the third effort for each of them to achieve the bliss of a long-term successful marital relationship...

...I swear I do not understand how Limbaugh gets away with this act of his. I have spent virtually my entire 50 years living in lands of classic conservatism in the intermountain west; I actually quit voting in presidential elections in my early adult years in my native Idaho because I didn't believe in engaging in a futile "statement" gesture of voting for the Democratic candidate in a state where - even with my vote - 60% of the tally was going to go to the Republican. In all my years living in various communities populated by loggers, farmers, mill workers, ranchers, and others who directly or indirectly made their living from the land, I came to have a pretty clear understanding of the values that comprised these folks political views insofar as their values could be characterized as political views (after all, two of these people were my parents). These citizens quite simply had no place in their value structure to openly accept known drug abusers with three failed marriages. Those kinds of people lived way over on the other side of town in run-down trailer parks or disheveled ratty little houses in the seedy, unpaved part of town out near the railroad tracks and the sawmills; you might end up having a beer with them on Friday night after work at some of the local bars, but they were most certainly not ever going to be confused with community leaders. Even at that, they had a sort of glint in their eye, the external manifestation of some sort of powerful evil lifeforce that caused more than one wife to explain to her husband in most explicit terms why he should be coming home in the evening rather than spending time in a bar consorting with such dangerous confused and lost souls...

...given all that, the Limbaugh phenomenon has always puzzled me. I have always laid the blame on the lack of introspection that characterized these conservative folks. I have only been able to assume that a fundamental lack of background knowledge has fueled the Limbaugh popularity. You won't, after all, find copies of People Magazine sprinkled in among the dog-earred issues of Guns and Ammo, Field and Stream, and Sports Illustrated (among others) stacked up in piles next to the waiting chairs in the local barber shop. As a result, these people with whom I've lived for the last half century don't have any benchmark from which to measure their man Rush's pronouncements. The wasted flacid weakness of the drug abuser? Rush has it nailed. The immoral careless bed- and marriage-hopping of all those drug-sucking fools in Hollywood (all liberals, you know) teaching our children exactly the wrong message about marriage and fidelity? You go, Rush! There's no connection to their own reality, no understanding that - in their own community - men with the moral and marital track record of Rush Limbaugh would be living in a part of town that they would never allow their children to go into to sell Girl Scout cookies or Little League candy bars...

...this situation just hollers out for a tell-all book. Marta, you need to write the book. A confused nation cries out to you to set the record straight. Write the book, Marta; it will make you a rich woman.....

Tea

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