No Rush

I’m glad that Rush Limbaugh’s not having a good week.

The obese, classless, drug-addicted blowhard has been feeling the heat since he attacked Georgetown law student and activist Sandra Fluke on February 29, calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute” after she testified before congressional Democrats about birth control. To date, 13 advertisers have abandoned Loathsome Limbaugh, including Quicken Loans, All State, LegalZoom and AOL (click here for a list of advertisers who are sticking with him).

Everybody from Jon Stewart and Michael Moore to John Boehner, Robotron Romney and Icky Ricky Santorum has commented on the brouhaha. (I wonder if Romney’s tepid response – “I’ll just say this, which is, it’s not the language I would have used” – has anything to do with the fact that the venture capital firm he founded, Bain Capital, owns Clear Channel, the broadcasting company that brings us Limbaugh’s vile diatribes and hateful rhetoric.)

Limbaugh, who has a bigger audience than any other commercial radio host in the country and rakes in $50 million a year, probably isn’t losing much sleep. He’s been attacking women, shaping the GOP’s agenda and making the world uglier for years. People still listen to and defend the repulsive monster.

Last week when I posted an anti-Limbaugh status update by comedian Andy Borowitz in Facebook – “Being called a slut by Rush Limbaugh is like being called a slut by an obese drug addict” – one of my few conservative “friends” replied, “So can you tell me why I should pay for college students to have safe sex?” I answered, “For the same reason that I have to pay to kill and maim innocent brown-skinned kids in the Middle East.” Then he posted, “So one stupid act needs another?,” to which I replied, “I don't see providing safe, legal contraception to adult women as being in the same category as leveling entire villages of innocent civilians for non-existent weapons of mass destruction and access to oil.”

See how Limbaugh’s fans turn a ridiculous episode of juvenile, hate-filled name-calling into a legitimate stand against random sex and immorality?

There are many things about life that I don’t understand. I don’t get why talented, creative, fascinating people like Amy Winehouse and Donny Hathaway leave us so soon while evil bastards like Jesse Helms and Barry Goldwater grow old and gray before they finally exit stage right. I don’t understand how a Boeing 747 weighing 836,000 pounds can fly from the Big Apple to the City of Angels. I have no idea why people question science but accept religion without reservation, deny the obvious reality of climate change, and believe the color of one’s skin can dictate the content of one’s character. And I’ll never understand how people can embrace and defend a lying, arrogant, truly repugnant misogynist like Rush Limbaugh and make him richer than Croesus while those who fight our fires and teach our children are demonized and paid a paltry pittance.

I also posted the following status update in Facebook:

Now that we've forced Rush "Pigboy" Limbaugh to lose advertisers and apologize for insulting a middle-class white woman, maybe we can turn our sights on the lousy treatment that poor people and people of color receive every day in this country.

Maybe someday I’ll understand excess, ignorance and inequity.

Sources: Huffington Post, examiner.com, Credoaction.com, the Atlantic Wire, msnbc.com.