October 2005 Archives

Rush has an excuse for his refusal to debate liberals on his syndicate radio show. Media Matters transcribed this statement from his 18 October broadcast:

What do I do on this program? I set up exactly what the other side's position is. I'm the only one who'll do it honestly. If I have a liberal guest on this program, I'm not guaranteed the liberal guest is going to be honest about what he believes. So in order to establish what I believe and what I think, I set myself up by presenting the liberal point of view on whatever issue it is I'm talking about. [emphasis in original]

What Limbaugh portrays as an "honest" presentation of the liberal point of view is a mendacious misrepresentation of liberalism, contrived for the sole purpose of attacking straw men rather than real liberals.

Limbaugh's honesty is on par with his responsible use of painkillers.

Andrew Sullivan, in "Limbaugh's Agit-Prop," calls Limbaugh's latest Opinion Journal piece, ("Holding Court") "something an aide to Andropov might have written in the waning years of the Soviet Union." Limbaugh's nonsensical comment about the Left's "big-government agenda" is obliterated by Sullivan:

Maybe the memo never made it to Rush, so let's see if we can get this through to him: it was the "held-in-contempt" Bill Clinton who reduced the size of government; it is your president and the conservative movement that has expanded it at a faster clip than at any time since FDR. That's not an opinion. It's what is called a fact. Deal with it. Or you too will never haul yourself out of the past.

The rest of Rush's essay is also stuck in the four-decades-old past, when conservatives really were out of power. He seems reluctant, for some reason, to acknowledge the GOP's control of government and the media; if he recognized these facts, he and his ideological cohorts might have to accept responsibility for their many--and ongoing--failures.