Fools rush in

Show All

Recent Contributors

Blog Roll

15 October 2009

A commentator over on Australian blogger Tim Blair's site asks a relevant question: "How is it that when Righties quote Lefties, they have video, audio, and notarized confirmation from the Pope, but when Lefties "quote" Righties, they have Wiki entries contributed by ‘Cobra'?"

It's an important point to keep in mind given the current smear campaign underway in the US against Rush Limbaugh, a man who has occupied an unhealthily large place in the psyche of the American Left for nearly two decades. Not for the first time, offensive - and completely unsubstantiated - quotes attacking blacks and supporting slavery have been attributed to the radio host, his enemies forcing him essentially to prove a negative.

This latest smear campaign comes at a particularly sensitive moment, as Limbaugh's potential purchase of an NFL team is now in jeopardy because of the rumours, which the League is considering using as a pretext to scotch the sale.

This, of course, is the same NFL that has happily rehabilitated Michael Vick after his prison stint for involvement in dogfighting ring that was busted when cops raided his property and "found the bodies of dead dogs buried on the premises, along with evidence that some of the animals there had been tortured and electrocuted."

Not for nothing do they call it the National Felons League.

On the other side of politics the burden of proof for bad behaviour is, and always has been, much higher. It took mountains of damning evidence about his divisive views about "white polluters", Republicans, and 9/11 conspiracy theories to get Van Jones to give up his salary as "Green Jobs Czar".

Robert Reich still commands an audience and Sarah Palin is still lambasted for her "death panels" comments, despite audio tapes from 2007 surfacing in which the ex-Clinton advisor and health care guru admits he thinks that older people should die because they're too expensive to keep alive, that younger people should pay more for their health costs, and that no one should expect to live longer than their parents.

(Amazingly, his audience can be heard on the tape applauding these statements - I'll leave it to others to draw their own conclusions about the nihilist nature of large segments of the intellectual Left).

And this is not even to mention other left-wing ranters, who happily abuse their opponents in the worst possible terms. Just this week we have seen Chris Matthews luridly fantasising about Limbaugh's murder ("At some point somebody's going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we'll be there to watch") and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann saying that, take away her "mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred", Michelle Malkin "would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it".

Remember this the next time someone talks about Fox News being lowbrow and full of hate.