Friday, March 2, 2012

Weasel of the Week: Rush Limbaugh

Fellow blogger Sam Wilson over at The Think 3 Institute nominated radio gasbag Rush Limbaugh as an "Idiot of the Week". I'll go one step further and hand out the dreaded Weasel of the Week award to Limbaugh for doing what he does best. Being an unrepentant jackass.

Oh, I'm sure you've all read or heard by now that Limbaugh went off on Georgetown student Sandra Fluke because she took a stand on contraception, and defamed the young woman by calling her a "prostitute", among other thngs. As usual, this kind of vitriol has gotten Limbaugh in very hot water, and not just with the usual women's rights groups. President Obama, it's been reported, reached out to Ms. Fluke before she was to be interviewed by Andrea Mitchell of NBC. The usual spin doctoring has already started. Limbaugh hasn't backed down, but insists that he doesn't hate women in general.

Let's face facts. Limbaugh peaked 20 years ago. His TV show tanked, but his radio show rolls on, despite the fact that his act went stale around the time he used the William Kennedy Smith case as an excuse to use music from Jeopardy! on his show. Remember the "Kennedys in Jeopardy" sketches? That got old real fast. What Limbaugh should be doing now is stepping back and taking another look at the landscape. Fellow gasbag Don Imus got himself in trouble a while back for making some ill-timed racist remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. While Imus has counter-balanced some of his negative antics with charity work, what has Limbaugh done to counter his penchant for foot-in-the-mouth disease? Not much. Sam Wilson used a word more closely associated with actor Alec Baldwin to describe Limbaugh. A bloviator. It seems so appropriate, doesn't it? Much of Limbaugh's stock in trade is blowing hot air like he was making balloons. Sooner or later, the balloon of popularity of his radio show will deflate, and we'll be lucky if he fades into obscurity. For now, Limbaugh gets the weasel ears, and should take the hint and go into sensitivity training, like, yesterday.

2 comments:

magicdog said...

This may sound unpopular but I don't think Rush deserves weasel ears.

He did apologize for his remarks which is more than I can say for those on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Many of them called conservative women like Sarah Palin far worse names and never bothered with the apologies.

hobbyfan said...

The apology came after I handed out the weasel ears. Anyway, Rush had no business making any comments on the matter if he wasn't fully informed, and that happens to be half his problem.