I gave up listening to Rush Limbaugh for Lent.
The tradition of the Lenten sacrifice is intended to help clear the mind of distractions and vices in preparation for the celebration of Holy Week and Easter. Over the years, I've given up a variety of things for Lent--television shows, foods, and believe it or not, I even gave up DU one Lent not too long ago--but with a new administration in the White House, one that we could once again be proud of as Americans, I figured a new sacrifice was warranted. While one usually considers drugs or alcohol as a crippling addiction, I had avoided such crippling vices but could not shake myself of another one. Typically, during my lunch break, I would get in my car, go to my intended destination (usually a restaurant or a book store), and my fingers would by force go to the radio and hit the button for the local conservative talk radio station (here in South Florida, 610 AM). And against everything I ever believed in, I would take in several minutes of the bloated, despicable self-aggrandizing and typically drug-addled gas bag known as Rush Hudson Limbaugh III.
There are several available excuses as to why a liberal would tune in Rush (or someone else of his ilk). Opposition research is the most convenient. You do, after all, want to know how the other side thinks, just to avoid an echo chamber of ideas and insulation from opposing views. Utter astonishment and bemusement that people out there view this man as their sole source of education and enlightenment is another handy reason.
I, however, best chose to justify my occasional Rush listenership by way of the analogy of the clown in the dunking booth. You'd go to the fair, walk by all the different exhibits and stations, and then you'd come across the dunking booth. Sitting in the chair of the dunking booth would be a clown who would throw irritating taunts at the contestant pitching the balls at the booth. Whenever the contestant would miss, the taunts would only grow louder. Until, of course, the contestant finally hits the lever, the seat drops, and down goes the clown into the tank of cold water. And you can't but feel satisfied that the taunting clown finally got his come-uppance. So, likewise, I couldn't help but listen to Rush at times, just for the anticipation that whatever cockamamie, unsubstantiated position the man would spew would eventually be refuted by the actual facts, and that the seat would hence give way and down Rush would go into the frigid water, embarrassed yet again.
I was content with this analogy until this past weekend, when I stopped at a convenience store along the Florida Turnpike. There, in the magazine rack along with the Rolling Stones and the People, was the most recent edition of Newsweek. The cover story was an essay by conservative David Frum entitled, "Enough: Why Rush is Wrong." Out of curiosity, I chose to buy the magazine. The story itself was quite interesting, basically being an argument from another conservative that Limbaugh's ideas are outdated for these days and why he shouldn't be made the de facto leader of the Republican Party.
But what struck me more than the article itself was the accompanying cover photo. On it was a close up, basically life size picture of Limbaugh's face. The picture was without airbrush, and you could see every oily pore and blemish on his face. You could see the rolls of fat below his chin. Conspicuous was Rush's hearing aid, necessitated due to his bout with hearing loss (which is assumed to have been caused by his abuse of Oxycotin, although that fact rarely receives attention.) What impressed me most, however, was the unavoidable scowl upon Rush's face:
His wild, hateful laser type eyes said everything that needed to be said about the man. He was unhinged from reason, from rationality, from normal and courteous discourse. One look at this photo and anyone can instinctively glean the ugly, disgusting rhetoric this man puts forth on a daily basis. Indeed, this look was not so dissimilar from that of Count Vigo the Carpathian, the evil, hellbent ghost in Ghostbusters II:
So it was with this cover photo that I came to a sudden realization why myself and many other solid progressives, liberals and/or Democrats cannot simply ignore this man whenever he has one of his infamous "incidents" of verbal diarrhea and disgrace. We are told not to shine a light on him, not to give him the attention he doesn't deserve. Yet, for all our best efforts, we are unable to heed this advice.
Why can't we ignore Rush? Easy. He's our villain.
From literature to television to movies, in my opinion the concept of the villain has been watered down over the years. Very rarely anymore do we see the one-dimensional, Snidely Whiplash who ties the heroine to the train tracks just because he's a nasty sort. Instead, modern villains usually have some sort of issue that turns them bad, some event or trauma that sours them on greater society and causes them to turn to a life of crime and chaos. Even in recent superhero movies, most villains have been featured as originating from a tragic fall from grace. Therefore, it becomes difficult to truly root against someone who we know had few bad lumps in life.
So it becomes almost refreshing that in real life we can find someone who is a villain, a bad person, just because. For eight years, we found this--to almost a humorous extent--in Vice President Cheney. While even George W. Bush could be humanized by the likes of Oliver Stone, Cheney was unredeemable. He scowered, he scowled, he shot men in the face. He blew the cover of a covert agent just because he didn't like what her husband said. He was an undying proponent of such incredibly un-American monstrosities such as torture and warrantless wiretapping. As such, the man was a true villain to the left, so much so that he earned comparisons to Darth Vader (although I would argue Emperor Palpatine would be a better analogy; Vader, at least, had once been a good guy.)
But with the change in administrations and Cheney being wheeled away (literally) into historical obscurity, we found ourselves in need of a new villain, a new bad guy. And the guy we found...well, he wasn't quite new. He had been around for decades, caused hell in the Clinton years, but in the end seemed to have been relegated to the obscure province of right wing-nuttery. When the Republicans had the White House and Congress, there was no real reason to give Rush the time of day. We had bigger fish to fry.
But as America re-emerged after the eight-year nightmare to welcome cries of "hope" and "change", there with it was Rush Limbaugh, as dour, nasty and ugly as ever. While most people of all political stripes were hoping that the new administration could bring the country out of the economic doldrums, there Rush was, proclaiming his desire for President Obama to fail. And as such, we found our villain. Because, face it, there is little to nothing to admire in the form of Rush Limbaugh. He's ugly, both physically and personally. On his show, he often talks about how he has always been a conservative, even as a child, thanks to his upbringing; therefore, he doesn't even fall into the tragic category of a fallen angel, a man who could have been good, but eventually succumbed to evil. The fact that he gets paid $26 million to broadcast a mere three hours a day (and simply vomit out his unsupported bare opinions in the process) goes against his proclaimed advocacy of hard work and responsibility. He once mocked the looks of a 12 year old girl simply because her father was a Democratic President (and who, by the way, grew up to be quite a beautiful woman, while Rush only grew uglier during the process.) Perhaps most egregious of all, he showed hypocrisy of a grand scale when he advocated for no-mercy enforcement against drug addicts, then found himself revealed as an addict and sought the compassion and forgiveness of his fans. He showed no respect for the law or the process, as made quite obvious by his smiling and grinning mug shot. Knowing the devastatingly addictive characteristics of Oxycotin, it is highly doubtful that a 30 day stint in rehab totally cured Rush from the grips of addiction, and it would seem like only a matter of time until he once again caught at the Belvedere Road Denny's with pills in hand.
So Rush is a villain, no doubt. But why? Why do we maintain a villain in the process, especially when we are dealing not with fiction, but with real life?
Villains exist to create a foil to the heroes of the world. Without villains, we would probably take our heroes for granted and grow tired of them, and dispose of their legacies without afterthought after the spotlight has left them. But for us, as liberals, progressives and Democrats, it is because of people like Rush Limbaugh that we spring to action and ensure that sensitive minds do not fall victim to their lies and hatred. Whether your hero is an Obama, a Clinton, a Kennedy, a Carter, a Frank or a Kucinich, the good that they do can only be truly exemplified when contrasted to the danger they faced from a Limbaugh, and their ability to overcome such adversity.
Nineteen days into Lent and I'm still Limbaugh-free. I have to say, my blood pressure is probably very happy for that fact. Plus, I've had the chance to listen to some very enlightening and un-Rushlike programming on NPR, which is certainly more of a blessing to my mind. Whether I continue my boycott of Rush Limbaugh after the conclusion of Lent remains yet to be seen. However, I think his importance should not be understated, because it is only through our villains that our heroes are truly heroes.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
