Monday, August 10, 2009

RUSH LIMBAUGH, EMBODIMENT OF MORAL AUTHORITY

Byron York of the Washington Examiner notes that David Brooks dared to criticize Rush Limbaugh this weekend on Meet the Press:

On "Meet the Press" [yesterday] morning, host David Gregory played a brief clip of Limbaugh's monologue -- a sentence in which Limbaugh said, "There are far more similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolf Hitler than between these people showing up at town halls to protest a Hitler-like policy" -- and then asked guest David Brooks to comment. "I hadn't seen the Rush Limbaugh thing," Brooks said. "That is insane. What he's saying is insane."

York asked Limbaugh for a response and received this answer:

Everyone seems to ignore that Pelosi started this, saying town hall participants were showing up with swastikas, etc. That's calling them Nazis, as Dick Durbin referred to our Gitmo interrogators from the Senate floor. I've been listening to the left compare George W. Bush to Hitler for eight years. I've been listening to Democrats and the left compare conservatism to Nazis my whole career. This time I responded. In kind, by comparing the radical left policies of the Nazis to today's radical left leadership of the Democrat Party. I'm not surprised they don't like it.

So: it's OK because some random liberals started it; it's OK because Democrats really are like Nazis; and it's OK because the real Nazis actually were left-wing.

Got it, Rush. Brooks called your thoughts on this "insane," and that would seem to be putting it mildly.

But how sacrosanct is Limbaugh on the right? Here's a reaction to all this from Lucianne Goldberg's site:



Follow the logic there? We know why right-wingers didn't like President Obama's "acted stupidly" remark: they think a police officer's judgment should not be questioned (especially in, um, certain circumstances). A policeman embodies the moral force of the law.

Lucianne.com seems to be equating Limbaugh's authority with that of a law-enforcement officer. He's not to be disrespected; apparently it's a threat to the social order to criticize him.

I knew Limbaugh was seen on the right as being exempt from criticism, but I guess it's more than that. I guess he's a law unto himself.

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