The Dogmas of the Quiet Past

I was pleased and proud to have this man as my president.  Pleased and proud to have his family as our First Family.  I was proud to vote for him for senator once and for president twice.  I was proud to have been one of the panelists who vetted him when he was still a relatively obscure state senator during his ultimately failed primary bid for the U.S. House of Representatives against incumbent Bobby Rush. In fact, I still have my ticket stub from his "Barack the Vote" fundraiser.  

However, as pleased and proud as I was to have Barack Obama as my president, it is also worth remembering the environment in which Obama governed, including taking a moment to remember much furious shit we Obama supporters took from our "allies" on the left.  In case you'd forgotten, here's a sample from a now-deadlinked post on Common Dreams from May, 2013.  I have an archive full of this stuff: 

When Obama finally declares martial law and announces the new Fascist States of American, O-bots like Maddow will eagerly put on their Nazi armbands -- cute little pastel hope & change swastikas, of course -- and join the goose-stepping parade. She's nothing but a propagandist and has absolutely no scruples whatsoever, just like the corporation that pays her, just like the "commander-in-chief" she props up with her lies and half-truths...

That kind of rhetoric was not unusual at the time: over-the-top rage from the whole Conservative media machine and from the dirtbag Left.  And in that environment, the Obama administration constituted a grand social experiment in offering the Republican party base -- which had been trained by Republican leadership and Conservative media to automatically loathe Democrats with an almost unhinged ferocity -- a different option.  Offering them compromise, thoughtfulness, dignity and respect, as well as policies that materially benefited them.

And that grand social experiment failed spectacularly.  Which is why it is worth our time and attention to diagnose why that experiment failed.  But to do that we'd have to journey into the past further back than 2016, which is something that pundits, the consulting class and our Never Trump "allies" almost all categorically refuse to do. 

That is because to examine the state of our union prior to 2016 makes the pundits, the consulting class and our Never Trump "allies" either look like arrogant idiots whose opinions should never be trusted again...or ambitious fools who were complicit in creating the ideal conditions for a monster like Trump to emerge...or both.  And since pundits, the consulting class and our Never Trump "allies" now dominate any media conversation about politics, that once again leaves it to dirty, disreputable outsiders like us to do the work of explaining why everything went to hell.  

To start with, President Barack Obama might as well have been built in a Centrist/Moderate/Both Siderist lab by the New York Times editorial board. He was everything the pundits and the consultant class said would be the "solve" for what was dividing America. 

This is from me 16 years ago, in 2010:

For his entire adult life, Barack Obama has succeeded by offering himself as the perfect midpoint between others. As a mathematical function, not a leader. As an averaging equation, not a true believer.

Since he showed up on the political radar, he has marketed himself relentlessly as

Half black and half white...
Half American urbanite, half world-citizen...
Half wonk, half preacher...
Half Harvard Yard, half Back o' the Yards...
Half red and half blue...

And this bone-deep reflex -- plus his formidable intellect and ability to rise to the rhetorical occasion -- would have prepared him perfectly for the Presidency...if this were 1960.

But it is not 1960 -- nor is he dealing with Harvard Conservatives pals or Springfield Republican pols -- and being a results-agnostic "process guy" when the process is utterly broken no longer works.

Instead, the ideologically-lockstepping Right led by Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers have found in Obama their perfect patsy: the Democrat who seems constitutionally incapable of counter-punching, who can only feel comfortable while suspended between two opposing positions and who will, therefore, find a compromise between opposites even when he has to invent wholly fictional opposing views to which he can cede half the playing field.

In order to avoid wasting his presidency, squandering the opportunity we have given him, and letting the country spiral into a permanent corporate feudal pest-hole, Barack Obama must do the hardest thing of all: he must exceed his design specifications. This is not unprecedented, but like Franklin Roosevelt the capitalist-turned-social-Democrat or Abraham Lincoln the compromiser-turned-Emancipator, Obama must let go of a central pillar of his identity and embrace the brutal fact that our modern house divided against itself cannot stand.

That we cannot endure permanently half-Fox and half-free.

That we will become all one thing, or all the other.

And that this is your fight, President Obama.

This burden has fallen to you: it cannot be shirked and cannot be delegated.

If you take up this challenge, millions of us will have your back, Mr. President.

But if you cannot summon the inner strength to evolve past your reflexive need to compromise with people who want to destroy you, then we are all well and truly fucked.

Because in 2008, Democrats took a chance on an outsider conjured out of their best hopes, but by 2010 it was clear to anyone with eyes to see that the Republican party and Conservative media were too far gone to be saved.  That by now there was too much power and too much profit trafficking in racism and conspiracy mongering and hatred for them to change.  That they viewed compromise, thoughtfulness, dignity and respect as weakness, and Obama as a patsy for continuing to offer calm, civility and concessions over and over again.  

That what the nation needed in that moment was a president who took to the bully pulpit every day to beat the shit out of GOP in the Truman style:

“I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.” 

And to go after the working men and women who voted against their own interests in the same manner:

But that never happened.  And the reaction from Republicans to this decent, honorable, thoughtful man who begged them to work with him solve our common problems was an eight-year-long, racist primal scream and the to nominate and elect the personification of their most dangerously ignorant, racist fears. 

The King of the Birthers. 

Then they renominated him again in 2020.

Then, when he lost, they attempted a coup to overthrow the government, and spent the next four years screaming that the election had been stolen.

Then they renominated him yet again in 2024, re-elected him, and here we are.  And by now it should be plain enough for even the punditocracy to see that the problem was never Trump.  The problem has always been the bigots and imbeciles of the Republican base who manifested Trump, and the Conservative media which continues to belt-feed the most lurid red-meat lies to that base, which eagerly gobbles it up and asks for seconds.   

So, to quote another president from Illinois whose presidential library and museum are also here, 

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it...

 And to repeat what I shamelessly stole from Lincoln 16 years ago and modified to fit our times:

That we cannot endure permanently half-Fox and half-free.

That we will become all one thing, or all the other.

 

Burn The Lifeboats

I Took This More Than 20 Years Ago...

...with my Canon PowerShot A95 digital camera.

The signs went up shortly after Salem Communications acquired the station in 2004 and flipped it from Spanish-language programming to all-conservative/all the time, talk radio. 

Salem was on a buying spree at the time. Between 2000 and 2008, its all-conservative programming footprint grew by roughly twenty net stations, though the gross number of acquisitions was higher because Salem frequently sold, swapped, and consolidated signals during the same period.

The result was that, at almost any time, anywhere in the contiguous 48 United States, you could find an AM powerhouse station slandering the Left, 24/7.  Depending on the time of day, you'd hear degenerate gambler and author of the "Book of Virtues" Bill Bennett,  Laura "Eva Braun-Nose" Ingraham,  Dennis "Prager U" Prager, Michael "Irrelevant Jabbering Mustache" Medved, Michael "The Savage Weiner" Savage or Hugh "Cyborg Sent From the Future to Destroy America" Hewitt. 

That means Salem's portfolio grew by about 20 stations net between late 2000 and late 2008. However, the actual number purchased was higher because Salem also sold, swapped, and consolidated some stations during that period.

And mind you, Salem wasn't even the most prominent dispenser of wingnut poison across this Land of the Free.  Tired of Michael Medved running his mouth but still need your fix of Libtard hating? Spin the dial just a little and you'll find the Premier Networks ready to fill your skull with incandescent rage against imaginary enemies.  

At the time, the Premier Networks was syndicated to around 650 stations from coast to coast and it's main lineup was (surprise!) Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and, later, Glenn Beck.

We're your tastes a little more boutique and regional?  ABC/Citadel had you covered.  They didn't own stations, but they syndicated their conservative programs to several hundred stations and featured the likes of Charlie Sykes, Mark Levin, Larry Elder and Mike Gallagher.

And if that wasn't enough to slake your thirst for hatin' on the Left, there was the feisty,  independent Talk Radio Network.

Against that absolute blitzkrieg of well-financed, nationwide saturation Conservative programming (and Fox News, and all the well-funded conservative magazines and rapidly multiplying websites) the Left had this pea-shooter: the financially unstable, multiply bankrupted and incompetently managed Air America.  Which, at its peak, could be found on a mere 50–70 affiliate stations.

It had terrific on-air talent -- no doubt about that -- and when I lived in Chicago I was an Air America listener, but it was a tricky business.  Frequently I had to walk my radio around my condo until I found a spot where I could pick up the signal.    It had the staticky intermittence of a French underground pirate radio sending German troop movement intel across the channel -- hardly a match for the million megawatt megaphone the Right had built for itself.  

Anyway, that was the state of play more than 20 years ago here in the Home of the Brave.  So the next time someone tells you the Republican base went suddenly and inexplicably berserk with rage, racism, and grievance after Donald Trump showed up and put the whammy on them, spit in their eye and show them this post.    

Nothing about this was sudden. It was financed, distributed, syndicated, and broadcast -- everywhere, day after day -- for decades.

Burn The Lifeboats

That Time When Republicans, Army Brass and Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense Conspired to Poison the Minds of the American Military

 

From UPI, December 7, 1993:

Armed Forces Radio gets a 'Rush' from Limbaugh

   

WASHINGTON -- Conservative talkmeister Rush Limbaugh may be bringing his view of the world to a new audience -- the U.S. military -- with an agreement to broadcast his show beginning in January, officials said Tuesday.

'We have been negotiating with Mr. Limbaugh's producers and have reached tentative agreement to air a portion of his three-hour radio talk show starting in January,' said Army Col. Joe Cook, chief of staff for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.

Although the negotiations are not completed, Cook described the talks as 'quite amicable' and that a final agreement could be reached soon.

Local station managers will determine the airtime and frequency of Limbaugh's broadcasts, said Cook.

Limbaugh's availability on the overseas service network has been the subject of a contretemps that has simmered for weeks. Among the entertainer's favorite targets are liberals, Democratic congressmen and President Clinton, the commander in chief.

Limbaugh fans abroad have written Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper, protesting that they cannot listen to Limbaugh. And Rep. Robert Dornan, R.-Calif., got about 70 congressmen to sign a letter to Defense Secretary Les Aspin last month, also protesting the lack of Limbaugh from the GI airways...

Meanwhile, [Bill Clinton's SecDef Les] Aspin telephoned Limbaugh last week to reassure the broadcaster personally that the Pentagon had nothing against him.

In his Tuesday broadcast, Limbaugh thanked Aspin for expediting the agreement with AFRTS, which he said took 32 seconds to reach.

'What better day than Pearl Harbor day to conclude negotiations?' Limbaugh asked.

From The New York Times, December 12, 1994:

Republicans Get a Pep Talk From Rush Limbaugh

To all the advice for the new Republicans coming to Congress, add this from Rush Limbaugh: A hostile press corps lurks inside the Beltway.

"You will never ever be their friends," the talk-show host warned most of the 73 Republican freshmen at a dinner here tonight. "They don't want to be your friends. Some female reporter will come up to one of you and start batting her eyes and ask you to go to lunch. And you'll think, 'Wow! I'm only a freshman. Cokie Roberts wants to take me to lunch. I've really made it!' " The audience laughed.

"Seriously," he added. "Don't fall for this. This is not the time to get moderate. This is not the time to start trying to be liked."

The freshman class, which included not a single "femi-Nazi," one of Mr. Limbaugh's favorite epithets for supporters of women's rights, whooped and applauded, proving itself one big fan club of the man it believes was primarily responsible for the Republican avalanche in November...

In closing, he asked his audience to "leave some liberals alive" as artifacts so that "we can show our children what they were."...

 

And, finally, the circle was complete.  From CNN, February 4, 2020:

President Donald Trump awarded the Medal of Freedom to conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday in an unprecedented move during the State of the Union address.

This is what "obeying in advance" gets you.  

Burn The Lifeboats

Rush Limbaugh: A Land of Contrasts

Sure, fine, Limbaugh died a monster.  No question.  But what us stupid Liberals don't seem understand is how much fun he was! Y'know, all those years and years and years of mocking the poor, and the feminazis, and AIDS victims, and negroes, and, of course, us stupid Libtards.  

From Charlie Sykes in the Washington Post:

To a degree that is not always understood on the left, Limbaugh invented a new genre in which conservatism could be entertaining, even fun. He was a master at using parodies as weapons. He was outrageous and daring; occasionally funny and charming, but also often dishonest and offensive.

Because Limbaugh's whole schtick was punching down.    Dr. Krugman brings the late Molly Ivins to the party:

Since there have been some people talking about how Rush Limbaugh was funny, it's worth quoting Molly Ivins https://t.co/rRrg9bxAYE pic.twitter.com/j0nsIOJBbw

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) February 17, 2021

He was thug, who made sport of the weak and relatively defenseless, so of course Conservatives loved it.   He was their Jabba the Hutt, and imitators like Sykes were his Salacious Crumbs.

Then, according to Mr. Sykes, things happened and time passed.  What things?  Who knows.  How much time passed?  Was it hours?  Days?  Months?  Years?  Decades?  Sadly, all records how or when or who is responsible for what are lost forever.  All anyone knows for sure is that something something something Trump!

The fact is that Limbaugh was fundamentally uninterested in ideas, and by the time he had helped Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency, the host was essentially done with conservatism as a set of principles.

Sure it is objectively true that Rush Limbaugh gave Charlie Sykes his political manhood.  That Sykes owes everything he has to the Hate Radio House That Limbaugh Built and that he spent his entire radio career as Wisconsin's own two-bit, decaffeinate Limbaugh knockoff, working tirelessly to turn Wisconsin in the wingnut basket case it is now.  But if you're willing to ignore all of that, it's clear that the real standard-bearer in the fight against Rush Limbaugh was... Charlie Sykes!  

As a radio talk-show host myself, I admired his skill as a broadcaster, even as I was alarmed by the role he was choosing to play. For years, I had pushed back against the charge that talk radio was simply about entertainment, outrage and anger. I made an effort to talk about issues and struggled to find ways to repackage conservative ideas in fresh terms.

But as time went on, Limbaugh went in another direction...

Because aren't Never Trrumpers always the hero of every story?  

If you doubt it, just ask Sykes' fellow MSNBC in-house Never Trumper, Michael Steele, about whom I wrote some stuff less than a month ago:

Michael Steele:  Accountability For Thee But Not for Me

...

And now that all political history prior to 2015/6 has officially been erased and we have clearly established who the Sinners are, Michael Steele can once again to use his position at MSNBC to continue elevating himself to political Sainthood by rewriting his years as RNC chair any way he pleases:

Steele:  One important point.  When I took over the party in 2009 it was very very important for me to approach where we were based on where we had come from.  We had come from a place where the party had lost uh in 2008 lost in 2006 and we had to understand why the par... why the party was being rejected.  So you have to begin with the "mea culpa".  You have to begin with owning the losses. Owning the carnage that you've left behind, because if you don't do that you can't begin to take the steps forward.  Besides no one will believe you.  You have no credibility.  I can't go to the country and say hey vote for us when they go, "Wait a minute, you got all this stuff, all this baggage..."

As those of us who were there and taking notes during Steele's Reign of Error know, Mr. Steele's fanciful Remembrance of Chairmanships Past bears no resemblance to actual history.  And so I must once again beg your indulgence while I give Clio the Muse of History her due by repeating that these are exactly the same very reasonable terms that some of us dirty, disreputable Libtards insisted that men like Michael Steele should be required to live up to before they could be trusted to join our team.  Because (as some of us dirty, disreputable Libtards warned) if we didn't draw that line, the day would come sooner that you would believe possible when men like Michael Steele would have completely colonized the media and there would be no one to say otherwise as they advanced their careers by lying and lying and lying about their own past and their complicity in building the GOP monster machine that produced Donald Trump.

So, for those of you who weren't paying attention at the time,  this is what actually happened during Mr. Steele's tenure as RNC chair.

After the Democrats nominated and elected of Barack Obama, the GOP found itself suddenly in urgent needed of a black man who was morally flexible enough to front for the deeply racist Republican Party, and Michael Steele was just the man for that job.  The party's recovery from its losses in 2006 and 2008 had nothing whatsoever to do with understanding "why the party was being rejected".  I had everything to do with leaning all the way in on the deeply racist Republican Party's rebranding scam called the "Tea Party" and their rallying cries of Birtherism and Death Panels.

Steele's tenure was a bumbling failure, and I can't help but laugh (albeit bitterly) when I hear Steele now saying shit like this with all the courage and conviction of a man with a steady media gig and no fear of being called out in public --

You CANNOT SLAP ME out in front of MILLIONS of people AND expect me to apologize TO YOU! Michael Steele on MSNBC. Millions agree. The Greedy Old Pirates BETTER RECOGNIZE!

— Hollis Key Jr (@JrHollis60) January 21, 2021

-- when getting slapped in the face and then being forced to apologize to the slapper was literally what happened the one time he dared to venture out of his role as the GOP's front man to mildly rebuke the real head of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh.  Limbaugh dropped a house on him and Steele obligingly ran to him and groveled for his forgiveness...

Heroes.

Heroes all. 

Burn The Lifeboats

Important But Lesser-Known American Anniversaries: Updated

I'll just bet you didn't know that this month of August marks the 30th anniversary of Rush Limbaugh being syndicated nationwide and beginning his ascent to the position of semi-official Spokesman and Kingmaker of the Republican Party.

That's right.  Three continuous decades of this carbuncle on the ass of American democracy --

-- sharting his racist drivel into the skulls of millions of Crazy Uncle Liberties one day, and hearing it pour out of their mouths as the gospel truth the next.

But take heart, fellow patriots, because 29 years later some of the Beltway's most elite observers are beginning to sit up and take notice!

More and more, "hate movement" seems like the proper term. Trump and some of his allies are promoting a "hate movement" against the American press. pic.twitter.com/s5C3eFZgJg

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 1, 2018

Next month will also mark the 28th anniversary of this unheeded and long-forgotten warning from The New York Times

The Politics of Slash and Burn

...

The group is Gopac, the G.O.P. Political Action Committee. Its general chairman is Representative Newt Gingrich. With the pamphlet, ''Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,'' comes a letter from Mr. Gingrich himself. Its message to candidates: Step up invective. Use words like these to describe opponents. These words work.

Mr. Gingrich's injunction represents the worst of American political discourse...

The Gopac glossary may herald a descent into even lower levels of discourse. It comes blessed by a politician of some influence - the Republican whip in the House - and it is intended for candidates on the state level, many of them presumably running for the first time. Even though Mr. Gingrich himself may not have seen the list before it was mailed, this is a disturbing document.

The nakedness of the Gopac offering also makes it useful. There must be limits to the negative politics that voters will bear...

We know this warning went unheeded because this November will mark the 24th anniversary of the Republican party officially crediting Rush Limbaugh with their 1994 takeover of the House.

Leaping ahead a couple of decades because it's my blog and I can do that, October 22nd will mark the 3rd anniversary of this 100th public demonstration of the inerrant political wisdom of Bill Kristol:

And for those of you keeping score at home, this May was the 2rd anniversary of all of those Republican thought leaders, columnists, elected officials and pundits who literally owe their careers to the poison crop Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich planted all those decades ago finally noticing that -- holy shit! -- their Republican party is full of Rush Limbaugh Republicans!

UPDATE:

30 years ago, the GOP finally decided to drop any pretense of still being the Party of Lincoln and instead focus on building an electoral battering ram out of Limbaugh-lobotomized racists and imbeciles.

And 30 years later, the Monster the GOP made called in to thank his Creator.

RUSH: So I have this note on the call screener computer: “On the hotline…” We don’t have a hotline. “On the hotline, you’re receiving a phone call in recognition of your anniversary broadcast. You’ll want to take this immediately.” Okay. So we’re going to the phones and we have a special guest. Who is it?

THE PRESIDENT: So, Rush, I just wanted to congratulate you on 30 years.

RUSH: (laughing)

THE PRESIDENT: This is your favorite president, and I think you are fantastic.

RUSH: (laughing)

THE PRESIDENT: I heard about it, and today’s the big day, 30 years. I wanted to call personally and congratulate you.

RUSH: I am floored. I… (laughing) I thought there was nothing anybody could do to surprise me today. I’ve been preparing for anything. Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT: You’re a very special man, Rush, and you have people that love you. I’m one of them. But you’re a very, very special guy. What you do for this country, people have no idea how important your voice is. So I just wanted to personally make this one and I said, “I’ll even dial the number myself if I have to.”

RUSH: (laughing)

THE PRESIDENT: But I just want to congratulate you. Thirty years in that tough business is incredible — and you’re stronger now than ever before.

RUSH: Well, I — I thank you so much. It’s such a thrill to hear from you.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s a thrill to be on...

Behold, a Tip Jar!

You Have The Right To Remain Silent

If you give up your right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be dismissed, warped, twisted and used against you by everyone on the Right from Wayne LaPierre (from today)--

In the midst of genuine grief, in an understandable passion, as millions of Americans searched for meaningful solutions, what do we find? Chris Murphy, Nancy Pelosi and more, cheered on by the national media, eager to blame the NRA and call for even more government control. They hate the NRA, they hate the Second Amendment, they have individual freedom. 

-- to the NRA's enablers at The New York Times -- 

David Brooks wrote something terrible this week. This is not a surprise. The Times pays him handsomely to write snotty, unedited editions of David Brooks Understands The Little People on a regular basis. They will not fire him, not even for takes as dopey and casually nauseating as this one:

So if you want to stop school shootings it’s not enough just to vent and march. It’s necessary to let people from Red America lead the way, and to show respect to gun owners at all points. There has to be trust and respect first. Then we can strike a compromise on guns as guns, and not some sacred cross in the culture war.

I think we’ve all seen what bending over backwards to accommodate Red America looks like. It looks a lot like the bullet-ridden liescape we all now currently occupy. Does the Times care that they’re printing this dreck? Of course not. Quite the contrary, the Times seems very happy these days to secure the endorsements of pretentious (and spineless) conservative publications and high-end white nationalist pamphleteers alike, and they have adopted a siege mentality when it comes to any profane opposition...

-- to a random Republican Congresswoman from New York --

Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican from New York, claimed in a radio interview Wednesday that “so many” people who commit mass murders “end up being Democrats.”

...

“I am fed up with the media and liberals attempting to politicize tragedies and demonize law-abiding gun owners and conservative Americans every time there is a horrible tragedy,” Tenney said in email statement to The Washington Post.

-- which precisely echoes the casual, reflexive, unhinged slander of Democrats that has become the every-day, all-occasion Mother Tongue of Republicans since at least the rise of Limbaugh and Gingrich a quarter of a century ago:

Mr. Gingrich's remarks were reminiscent of an interview he gave to The Associated Press just before the 1994 election in which he spoke of the widely publicized case in which two children had been drowned by their mother, Susan Smith.

"I think the mother killing her two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick society is getting and how much we have to have change," he said at the time. "I think people want to change, and the only way you can get change is to vote Republican."

I gave up my right to remain silent right around the time GOP turned their party over to scum like Gingrich, Limbaugh, Rove and Atwater.

And I've never missed it.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

The Algorithm That Generates "David Brooks" Columns For The New York Times...

...is performing optimally.

From me, five years ago:

Held in durance vile by the need to pay the mortgage on his $4M dollar estate, twice a week, every week, David Fucking Brooks is forced out onto the balcony of his demesnes to toggle his giant head around and around, searching...searching...searching the narrow, well-manicured ideological easement between the Washington Beltway and his mansion for one more oddly tufted of bit dandelion or fleck of poo upon which to hang his one thousandth column about Centrism and/or the decline of Western Civilization at the hands of the Dirty Hippies.

Mr. Brooks' makes his obsessive devotion to constantly, drearily repeating the same soggy lies for large piles of money ever so much easier on himself by subtracting history, economics and human nature from his ruminations. Thus liberated from the need to write about actual people and stuff, Mr. Brooks instead bumbles around through an airless, abstract null-zone full of geometric shapes and big, stupid ideas. And from this chill, dead, interstellar void, Mr. Brooks moans out his melancholy bi-weekly dirges about  Centrism and/or the decline of Western Civilization at the hands of the Dirty Hippies, singularly unaware of and unconcerned with the real plight of we tiny, weak humans out here beyond  the narrow, well-manicured ideological easement between the Washington Beltway and his mansion in a place known as the Real World.

From Mr. David Brooks today (with emphasis added):

The Siege Mentality Problem

...

I just took part in a compelling conversation on this subject at the Faith Angle Forum, founded by the late Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and came away with one core explanation: the siege mentality. In fact, I’d say the siege mentality explains most of the dysfunctional group behavior these days, on left and right...

You see the siege mentality not just among evangelical Christians but also among the campus social justice warriors and the gun lobbyists...

Today Christians are more likely to argue that the liberal order itself is intolerant toward faith. Social justice warriors are prone to argue that America is racist and oppressive in its very bones...

So what is the solution to this terrible problem?

David Brooks answers.

It should be met with confident pluralism.

Dammit!  If only there were some political party or school of ideological thought out there somewhere which would publicly embrace and promote tolerance and pluralism!

And what specifically could America's great influencers of opinion have done during, say, the Dubya Administration to avert this terrible state of affairs?

David Brooks answers.

Suppose America’s leaders had gone to conservative evangelicals a decade ago and said: Look, we understand that changing attitudes about gay marriage put you in a tough position. We’re not going to stop doing what we think is right, but we’re going to try to work out some accommodation with you on religious liberty so you can feel at home here and practice your faith.

"America’s leaders"?

And just who the fuck are "America’s leaders"?

You see, Mr. David Brooks understands an important fact about his audience that perhaps you do not.  His real audience are a handful of influential titans of industry, academia, media and politics.  They adore and underwrite his column because they are mostly doddering old New York plutocrats and ivory tower Centrists who live far above the cares and concerns of peasants like you and me.  And their extreme privilege affords them the luxury of simply refusing to remember what the past was really like for peasants like you and me, and instead allows the to relax and daydream in a comfortable hammock of Brooks-spun bullshit that completely ignores the fact that the GOP has been a racist shitpile of dementia, paranoia and engineered-rage for decades.

What Mr. Brooks desperately needs his readers to ignore is that, a decade ago, the Right had already long since given up listening to reason.  Had already written off anything they didn't hear on Hate Radio or see on Fox News as Liberal propaganda.  Had long since disappeared down the Limbaugh/Gingrich rat-hole never to return. 

See it didn't matter how welcoming we on the Left were or are.  It didn't matter how bent-over-backwards willing to compromise were were or are.  It didn't matter who we nominated as our standard bearer or how much of an open heart that standard bearer would offer:

Because thanks to decades of concerted effort by Mr. Brooks's Republican party, the Right was already dead from the neck up.  Already reduced to reprogrammable meatbags willing to take direction from any demagogue who would tell them their fear was really freedom and their paranoia was really patriotic.

Which is why, a decade ago the leaders of Mr. Brooks's Republican party weren't worrying about calming the Right down so that they could feel safe in the confidently pluralistic country of Mr. Brooks' imagination. Instead they were very busy keeping the wingnut Evangelicals scared shitless and voting Republican with dire warnings that the Libtard Traitor Brigade (that's me) was coming to steal their guns and march their kids into Gay Reeducation Camps:

From Kevin Drum, in 2005:

AARP GETS THE SWIFT VETS TREATMENT....In my continuing quest to prove that a picture is worth a thousand words, here's your picture of the day. Via Josh Marshall, it's a screen capture from the American Spectator site of an ad from USA Next, a loony right group that thinks of itself as the conservative alternative to AARP. Apparently "the real AARP agenda" is to endorse gay marriage and disband the military.

Lovely folks, these USA Nexters. Clicking on the link doesn't provide any explanation for this putrid charge, but no matter. Clearly AARP is little more than a front group for godless communism anyway. Here is USA Next figurehead Art Linkletter, attempting a pale imitation of the John Birch Society:

I’d like to ask some blunt questions: Do you want more taxes taken out of your earnings? Do you want more unelected bureaucrats taking over more details of your life and your family’s life? Do you want federal regulators making your health choices, instead of you, your family, and your doctor? Do you want government regulators to control the investment and retirement decisions of your family, instead of you?

If you answered “Yes,” then AARP is your group....

That brings back memories. In any case, USA Next has now hired the same guys who created the SwiftVets commercials last year — apparently the military/gay marriage ad wasn't quite incendiary enough — and they ought to be a good fit. A marriage made in heaven, so to speak.

...

Although it is an era now obviously lost the memory of David Brooks and his readers, dirty hippies like me vividly recall things like  “Justice Sunday”, when Conservative Men of God openly terrorized members of the federal judiciary because judges who did not obey the dictates of the mullahs of the American Taliban were all worse than “a few bearded terrorists who fly planes into buildings.”

And so it was back in those ancient days that a Very Prominent Republican known as “John Of The Cornyn” was more than willing to link “words” and “violence”, just as long as it served his sick, theocratic agenda:

Senator Links Violence to 'Political' Decisions

'Unaccountable' Judiciary Raises Ire

By Charles Babington

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, April 5, 2005; Page A07

…

Sen. John Cornyn said yesterday that recent examples of courthouse violence may be linked to public anger over judges who make politically charged decisions without being held accountable.

In a Senate floor speech in which he sharply criticized a recent Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty, Cornyn (R-Tex.) -- a former Texas Supreme Court justice and member of the Judiciary Committee -- said Americans are growing increasingly frustrated by what he describes as activist jurists.

"It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions," he said. Sometimes, he said, "the Supreme Court has taken on this role as a policymaker rather than an enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people."

Cornyn continued: "I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. . . . And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have.”

Of course, being a Republican, when the actual facts of the case did not in any way support his venomous talking points, Cornyn just made shit up (citation of vintage Tom DeLay fatwa included for no extra charge):

…

Cornyn, who spoke in a nearly empty chamber, did not specify cases of violence against judges. Two fatal episodes made headlines this year, although authorities said the motives appeared to be personal, not political. In Chicago, a man fatally shot the husband and mother of a federal judge who had ruled against him in a medical malpractice suit. And in Atlanta last month, a man broke away from a deputy and fatally shot four people, including the judge presiding over his rape trial.

Liberal activists criticized Cornyn's remarks, and compared them to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's comments last week following the death of a brain-damaged Florida woman, Terri Schiavo. DeLay (R-Tex.) rebuked federal and state judges who had ruled in the Schiavo case, saying, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."…

I could go on and on and on and on, but it wouldn't matter because neither Mr. Brooks nor his readers is ever going to cop to remembering any of these terribly inconvenient facts.

To them, all of this happened thousands of years ago. 

On a different planet. 

Orbiting a different sun.

And speaking of Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times, you know who was a big 'ol hero (just for one day) on Hate Radio yesterday?

Yep.

From the Rush Limbaugh Show:

David Brooks Swerves into the Truth on Bill Clinton and Sexual Harassment
Nov 13, 2017

 [Transcript from the Charlie Rose Show followed by Boss Limbaugh's Deep Thoughts]

...
BROOKS: (muttering) The uncomfortable thing for a lot of progressives, frankly, is: How much did the Clinton thing create this whole environment? How much did tolerance of Bill Clinton create the environment in which the rest of this, uhhh, was given permission?

ROSE: How much do you think?

BROOKS: I think it had effect. And if you don’t draw lines in these big cases, then you don’t draw lines in the little cases. You know, we saw Republicans, you know, tolerating what Donald Trump was accused of doing. And today we’re seeing this astounding case where Republicans in Alabama are tolerating what Judge Roy Moore is accused of doing. It’s a sign of how partisanship has replaced everything else. Partisanship can blind you to moral… morality, toward truth. Partisanship has become the, the, the, uh, idol — uh, idol of our time.

RUSH: Let me help out here. I’ll tell you what is uncomfortable is when only one side continues to get away with it. I don’t care what it is. I don’t care if it’s collusion with the issues, like Hillary buying that dossier or Bill Clinton and his cavorting with a 19-year-old intern. If one side, the Democrats, constantly get away with it and are never held to account — and if the media and the Democrats circle the wagons and not only do they tolerate it, but then promote the perp… I mean, Dan Rather. Dan Rather totally made up stories and documents about George W. Bush and the National Guard. He was exposed as having done it. And what did the journalism community do?

They gave him two brand-new awards! They created new awards and had two dinners to honor Dan Rather for his service. They circled the wagons. They knew that if they joined the parade of condemning Rather, they were condemning their own industry. So rather than do that, they circled the wagons, held a couple of awards dinners for Rather, and proclaimed him to be a great journalist and so forth. When one side gets away with it all the time and when one side is rewarded with applause and laughter for getting away with it?

And so because Mr. David Brooks is absolutely incapable of functioning outside of his Both Siderist biosphere, it was imperative that he haul Bill Clinton. Monica Lewinski and the 1990s right smack into the middle of a discussion about Roy Moore's pedophilia. 

And because of that, Rush Limbaugh listeners may now take comfort in the fact that even a New York Times cuck like David Brooks thinks that what we should really be talking about is Bill Clinton and how Democrats always get away with everything.

As I have mentioned once or twice or a thousand times, without Both Siderists like David Brooks to drive their getaway car, the batshit Right would collapse.

Way to go, Mr. Brooks!

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Code Name: Operation Dumbo Drop

I can think of no more perfect metaphor for the state of the Republican Party than the sight of its most influential racist loudmouth media liar daintily slipping away from a very real threat which he has been telling his meathead listeners was a Libtard Hoax.

From Think Progress:

Limbaugh evacuates South Florida after claiming Hurricane Irma was a liberal hoax

Doing the show from South Florida would be "legally impossible," Limbaugh admitted.

Rush Limbaugh will be evacuating South Florida, just days after the popular conservative radio host claimed that Hurricane Irma would not hit the United States and that scientists and the liberal media were hyping up the hurricane as proof of their global warming “lie.”...

Don't worry dittoheads, your Dear Leader will be back soon.  Because as long as he continues to enjoy the undying loyalty of the reprogrammable meatbags of the Right, nothing can stop him:

Behold, a Tip Jar!

In Days Of Old, When Knights Were Bold...

We rejoin our story as the slow-motion GOP freakout over the !Sudden!Discovery! that the Republican party is full of -- gasp! -- Republicans ...



... continues to dominate the nation's Grand Guignol comedy circuit (for today's example we turn to the Breitbart Collective Farm):

LIMBAUGH: TRUMP MOVEMENT EXPOSES LOW REGARD CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUALS HAVE FOR ORDINARY AMERICANS

Which is certainly horrifying.  And not funny at all.  And bitterly funny-as-hell.

But let us leave the fog and thunder of America's political media battlefield where everyone is feigning surprise that, under it's tissue-thin veneer of David Brooks respectability, Conservatism is a roiling cesspit of ignorance, racism and crazy...

...and return to a simpler time.  A time before YouTube and Instagram.  Back before your 'umble scrivener was even a blogger -- when I was just a long-winded commenter at the late Steve Gilliard's News Blog.

Steve's comments sections are long-gone now, existing only in the memories of those who found a home there and stomped the jolly fuck out of the trolls that sometimes stumbled through the door (Looking at you, "bloomie".)  But sometimes Steve would haul a comment up from below-decks and turn it into a post, so while all of my comments have turned to digital dust and blown away... thanks to Mr. Gilliard occasionally front-paging my comments, what you see below was saved from the bony fingers of internet entropy.

I am reposting it here because I think from time to time it is vital for us on the Left to to look back and remember just how fucking spot on we have always been about the GOP, and how aggressively we have been slandered and ignored by the Beltway media and by the political elite precisely because we have been right about the Right all along.

From The News Blog in March of 2005:

They are serious

Driftglass posted this in comments and it's too damn funny to stay there.

IMHO it’s as simple as: “Never jump into bed with someone who’s crazier than you are.”

For the Suburban Gated, the non-deranged gunnies and the Tax Cuts Uber Alles Republicans, it’s all jolly good fun having a romp with the Fundies…as long as they keep delivering the 20% margin the GOP must have to win anything and as long as they stay the fuck away from my house and family, its all just good kinky fun…

…until the sun comes up, and you realize that the Electoral Candy you were offered was just bait to get you into the Windowless Fundy Panel Truck. Oops.

And now you’re waaaay out in the country somewhere you don’t recognize without your pants, and you start to figure our that all the Burning Crosses and Swastikas and Apocalyptic Paraphernalia that tricks out the inside of the van isn't tatted-up Goth Chick posturing.

And Randall Terry and Tom DeLay wave to you from the front seat and say, “Mornin’ shug! Get ready; we gonna burn us some ‘a them Chirst Hatin’ Abortionists today.” Or Fags. Or Negros. Or Liberals. Or Ay-rabs. Or Jews. Or, really, Anybody.

And all of the slack-jawed yokels who were so eagerly helpful while you were passing you’re Lovely Tax Cuts are sitting around you giggling…and armed to their snaggled teeth.

And then you hear, “Bring Out The Gimp.” (Which, for my money, should be the Democrats’ Lead Media Message for the next four months.)

Oh. God. You mean these crazy fucks were serious? Like, really, really serious?!

No shit they’re serious, Suburban Weekend Bad-Ass -- and it's not exactly like you weren't given Ample Warning: Now they have your shriveled nuts in a razor-lined C-clamp, they want the very high interest vig on the Electoral Loan they made you to pay for your Optional War and Drunken Safety Net Shredding Good Times.

As I've been saying, the devil wants his due, and he's come to collect.

They thought they could play them forever. I guess forever is today,

 Other than a few of the names, there is absolutely nothing about this post from more than a decade ago from a long-dead blog that needs updating.

Absolutely nothing about the Right which we did not see coming and have been shouting from the rooftops since forever.

And that's a tragedy.

Sunday Morning Comin' Down

The Media Clusterfuck Convergence constinues.

The worse human being in America

was on Fox News Sunday explaining to inbred halfwit bigots from sea to shining sea that the only "race" problem we really have in this country was created by professional race hustlers starting with the Uppity-Negro-in-Chief all the way down the millions and million and millions of African Americans who have been duped into believing that the Party of Jefferson David does not have their is not their best interests at heart:

Still, Limbaugh also almost wholly blamed the reaction to the grand juries’ actions on “grievance politics” that he said was “ripping our fabric apart.

“There are too many people profiting off this strife,” he insisted.

On Fox, Limbaugh slammed both Obama and Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) of New York for not doing enough to defend the police in the wake of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner deaths.

“I don’t think things are perfect and rosy in America,” Limbaugh said, before adding that Obama and de Blasio ignored centuries of racial progress in their recent reactions. “You would think it’s 200 years ago.”

...

Also now that the "Eric Garner died because of Liberal Big Gummint Taxes" has tested well in flyover country (and because the Party of Jefferson Davis has literally no other lies in its arsenal big enough to make that video go away)  they're sticking with that.

And you know what?

If they just hunker down long enough with their fingers jammed in their ears deep enough yapping Big Gummint bullshit loud enough...sooner that you will believe possible this too shall pass.  It works with every mass shooting.  It works every time an unarmed black person is murdered by some meatstick with a gun and a sense of entitlement.  And in case you hadn't noticed, not a single Wall Street looter or high-ranking Iraq War criminal has lost a wink of sleep or spent a day in jail.

...

The radio host added that the “real outrage” in Garner’s death was that someone was killed for selling loose cigarettes, which he said was an outgrowth of liberals’ desire for more government.

“If you want a powerful state, there’s your police force,” he said.

I really can't work up much of an angry about Limbaugh or Fox anymore.  They exist because there is a hugely profitable market in telling bigots, fascists, theocrats and assorted other American degenerates what they want to hear.

They exist because the institutions which are supposed to keep noxious poison like Fox and Limbaugh in check have sold us all out.  For money.

So Boss Rush will go right on getting rich cultivating and harvesting the race panic of the shallow end of the American gene pool right up until the corporate media determines it is in its financial interest to stop him.  But until then, while you glean dinky little blogs at the corner of Pariah and Oblivion for nourishment, expect there to always be  chair pulled out at Serious Person's feast table for the worst people in America.

And speaking of contemptible whittle shavings from Lester Maddox's pick handle...

...comes now the editor of America's White Supremacist magazine of record, Rich Lowry, to tsk-tsk the Rolling Stone for its low standards of journalism, talk over inconvenient and dispense Conservative dating advice:

One could speculate endlessly on what kind of toxic shithole Lowry must be in real life if he thinks forcing his rodential tongue down some poor women's throat is all part of the dance of love and the pitching of the woo --

-- but I would rather wonder what George Stephanopoulos daydreams about while his horrible guests argle-bargle this claptrap.

I'm guessing he imagines what it might be like to be tall.

And to have a soul.

Hey, speaking of human toilet brushes who burned through their 15 minutes of fame five years ago, how deep into Peggy Noonan's Special Green Room Reserve did Rick Santelli have to spelunke to make this string of nonsense some out of this face hole? (Meet the Press)

RICK SANTELLI: Well, listen, it's a complicated issue. I come from immigrant grandparents. The country would not be what it is if it wasn't for the immigrants in this country. The border, it's important to some conservatives. I understand that. Outsource it to the likes of Google. You could work through this problem. Why do we need this--

CHUCK TODD: You'd do a technology thing, huh?

RICK SANTELLI: Absolutely. Why do we need this comprehensive plan? Have we not learned anything from the failed roll out of the Affordable Care Act?...

And so forth.

Typical Sunday in our country at the Mouse Circus freak show that set up its tents on the grave of genuine journalism.

The Law

In New York, improperly clipping a dog's ears --

Mckinney's Consolidated Laws of New York Annotated. Agriculture and Markets Law.

... 

§ 365. Clipping or cutting the ears of dogs

1. Whoever clips or cuts off or causes or procures another to clip or cut off the whole or any part of an ear of any dog unless an anesthetic shall have been given to the dog and the operation performed by a licensed veterinarian, is guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment for not more than one year, or a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, or by both.

-- carries a heavier penalty than a cop murdering an unarmed black man in broad daylight.

Meditate* on that for awhile.

*Thanks for the catch

Ha Ha, Charade You Are

As you read this, consider all of the creatures which walk or swarm or crawl on the land or fly in the air or burrow beneath the soil or swim in the rivers and seas.

And then consider, of all of the living things currently drawing breath on planet Earth, which among them would sound the most pulverizingly ludicrous with this coming out of it's mouth-hole:

I just know egos, folks.  I studied 'em, political, performer, professional, insensitive, insecure.  I know egos, and I'm just telling you that Richard Sherman is lost in himself...

Anyway, so he gets caught up in that, and I made an analogy: "You know people like this.  You know people who are so lost in their egos that they think that everybody's thinking about them all day and all the time."

I used, as an example, Obama as a large-ego type person who I'm sure probably sits around in private thinking of himself. You know, I love asking people a question, and I've been asking people this question of successful people for 30 years.  I asked George Will once when I interviewed him. ... I said, "When the family's gone to bed, you're the only one up, it's late at night, and most of the lights are off and you're sitting around doing whatever you're doing, do you reflect?

"Do you ever stop to reflect on what you mean to so many people and how much influence you have over so many people?"  He looked at me, cocked his head, and said, "No, I'm thinking about what I have to do tomorrow.  I'm not sitting around thinking about my influence on people." I've asked a lot of people that question, and every one of the profoundly successful people I've asked that question say the same thing (to one degree or another) that George Will said.

"No, I'm not thinking about me."

But there are people like that, and I just think Obama's probably one of them.  I not even "think" it; I know it.  He has to be...

Yeah.

It's this guy:



Because of course it is.

Lessons Learned

What Valuable Lesson has the King of the Pig People learned from the crash-and-burn of Moochin' Bob McDonnell?

The same Important Lesson he always learns.

Let's keep in mind, by the way, too -- this is very important to point out -- that while in office, the conservative, McDonnell, did his best to be bipartisan and to reach across the aisle, and we see all the good that it did him.

-- Rush Limbaugh, January 22, 2014

And the People of the Pig said, "Amen!"

A Reader Asks:

On the list of 'Why don't the Democrats do the easy stuff', driving a wedge between the finance and tin foil hat Rush types has always been at the top of my head scratching list.

From instance, not a peep from the Dems when Rush made that remark about poor (BLACK) people teaching their kids to eat from dumpsters.

The Dems just let slow balls over the center of plate go by, time after time.

I really don't get it.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that the value of running against Boss Limbaugh has already been priced into everyone's calculations. Remember that Limbaugh went national very shortly after Reagan, Scalia and Bork killed the Fairness Doctrine and never looked back, which means he has been on the air in syndication yapping about feminazis and welfare queens for a quarter of a century. 

He is, in other words, already such a known quantity that whole books have been written about him by people like Senator Al Franken, so the breakdown of groups who are aware of Limbaugh's existence is roughly as follows:

• Liberals, who already know what a toxic shitbag he is.


• Conservative Limbaugh fans, who are no longer capable of being affected by any facts that conflict with their idolatry.


• Mainstream media clowns, who will use Limbaugh's comments as a goad to get the black and and red ants fighting on-camera, but don't really give a shit about him past that:  after all, these are the same people who have let Newt Gingrich get away with verbal murder for decades and have never, ever called him on it on the air.


• Cringing Centrists, who deal with every critique of people like Rush by whining that "Both sides do it!" and stuffing their ears with old David Brooks columns.


• Finance and money people who, like German industrialists in the 1920s and 1930s, find Limbaugh's ability to motivate a crowd much more important than the fact that he is a hatemongering, racist thug.
  
  Because they still think they can control him:

And It's Too Late To Lose

The weight you used to need to throw around.

So have a good drown, 

Here comes the fight over Rush Limbaugh 

By Jonathan Bernstein

Conor Friedersdorf wrote a key piece just after the election arguing that Republicans have to choose between Rush Limbaugh and all the groups Limbaugh habitually sneers at...

As you go down all alone.

GOP civil war: Limbaugh vs. the consultants

A top Republican strategist calls conservatives "loons and wackos." Limbaugh is not pleased

BY ALEX SEITZ-WALD

The last time we checked in with the post-election GOP civil war, Herman Cain was threatening to form a new party to compete with the GOP, Bill Kristol sparked a schism over tax increases, and Grover Norquist, the high priest of anti-tax dogma, was losing his grip on congressional Republicans.

This week, the Republican soul searching and polite recriminations via anonymous quote exploded into an all-out war of words between representatives of two wings of the party that have never gotten along, but largely kept quiet for the good of the conservative cause.

In one corner are the consultants, Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s 2008 campaign, and Mike Murphy, who advised Mitt Romney. In the other corner is Rush Limbaugh, the embodiment of the conservative id in human form. We don’t have a dog in this fight as there’s blood on both of their hands, so just sit back and enjoy.

Schmidt threw the first punch in this battle on “Meet the Press” with a left, left combo strike against the right flank of his party. GOP leaders have “succumbed to the base,” he said last Sunday, arguing that “to too many swing voters in the country, when you hear the word ‘conservative’ now, they think of loons and wackos.” As if that weren’t enough, when host David Gregory played a clip of Limbaugh, Schmidt took the bait. “Our elected leaders are scared to death of the conservative entertainment complex, the shrill and divisive voices that are bombastic and broadcasting out into the homes,” he said in a clear reference to the radio host.

...

Dragged down by the stone.

The Nasty GOP?

For some conservatives, the labels “nasty” and “mean” are well earned.

By Jim Geraghty

There’s a word that accurately summarizes the perspective of Republicans who believe that Latinos voted for Obama because they want amnesty for criminals and endless welfare, that young people voted for Obama because they’re ignorant and want free birth control, and that blacks voted for Obama because they wanted free cell phones: contempt. And it’s hard to persuade people to adopt your perspective, join your movement, or vote for your candidate when you speak of them with contempt.

The Sandra Fluke “slut” argument: When Democrats spotlighted Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke for her conviction that employers should be required to provide insurance that covers birth control, it was hard to imagine a more self-destructive reaction than Rush Limbaugh’s initial one:

What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.

Wait, it got worse:

So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.