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-- The New Yorker cover of Obama
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Posted by LazFX on Jul-16-2008 13:53:

quote:
Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
Haha, carry on then, and drink one for me.


WILL DO!


Posted by The17sss on Jul-16-2008 19:09:

back on subject, just trying to stir the pot.....

Barack Obama, 2005:
But what I love about political cartoonists - at least, what I�ll love about them until I open up the paper and see a drawing of my big ears accompanied by something that came out of my big mouth - is that they cut through the conventional wisdom and just tell it like it is. People like Herblock and Tony Auth and others can jolt us awake from our political cynicism with a few ingenious images and a clever phrase that can often speak more truth than a thousand words. And this is the kind of wake-up call our politics needs today more than ever.

Barack Obama , 2008:
I do think that, you know, in attempting to satirize something, they probably fueled some misconceptions about me instead. But, you know, that was their editorial judgment. And as I said, ultimately, it�s a cartoon, it�s not where the American people are spending a lot of their time thinking about.

quote:
Uh-huh. Cartoons awaken us from our political cynicism except when they explicitly try to point out that cynicism � and then we have to ignore the satire and take them at the most superficial level? Sounds like someone wants to play a victim card a little too enthusiastically here, and on national television, no less. It got worse. Obama tried playing the victim-by-proxy card as well on Larry King�s show:
�You know, there are wonderful Muslim Americans all across the country who are doing wonderful things,� the presidential candidate told CNN�s Larry King. �And for this to be used as sort of an insult, or to raise suspicions about me, I think is unfortunate. And it�s not what America�s all about.�
Did Barack Obama just accuse the New Yorker of editorial profiling? Does Obama really think that the New Yorker cartoon meant to skewer him rather than the Right? How clueless is Barack Obama, anyway?
Let�s try to explain this in small words so even the laughless Left understands it. The New Yorker meant to satirize (sorry � make fun of) what they saw as conservative smear campaigns against Obama. They did not mean to imply that there was anything wrong with wearing a dishdasha or being Muslim. The New Yorker could have provided more context for the gag, but anyone with a lick of common sense can deduce its meaning � which may be why the Left finds itself in such a lather over it.


For more hilarity, watch this Daily Show clip

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos...?videoId=176628


Posted by Clovis on Jul-16-2008 19:18:

Again, he's in an election, he has to denounce it.

Also, LMAO at daily show. I had that bears issue, great cover.


Posted by The17sss on Jul-16-2008 19:53:

he'd look better if he would have just laughed at it. LOL that was the first time I'd seen that thing about the bears though... good stuff.


Posted by Groundhog Boy on Jul-17-2008 00:37:

quote:
May We Mock, Barack?
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

When I interviewed Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for Rolling Stone a couple years ago, I wondered what Barack Obama would mean for them.

�It seems like a President Obama would be harder to make fun of than these guys,� I said.

�Are you kidding me?� Stewart scoffed.

Then he and Colbert both said at the same time: �His dad was a goat-herder!�

When I noted that Obama, in his memoir, had revealed that he had done some pot, booze and �maybe a little blow,� the two comedians began riffing about the dapper senator�s familiarity with drug slang.

Colbert: Wow, that�s a very street way of putting it. �A little blow.�

Stewart: A little bit of the white rabbit.

Colbert: �Yeah, I packed a cocktail straw of cocaine and had a prostitute blow it in my ear, but that is all I did. High-fivin.� �

Flash forward to the kerfuffle � and Obama�s icy reaction � over this week�s New Yorker cover parodying fears about the Obamas.

�We�ve already scratched thrift, candor and brevity off the list of virtues in this presidential cycle, so why not eliminate humor, too?� wrote James Rainey in The Los Angeles Times, suggesting �an irony deficiency� in Obama and his fans.

Many of the late-night comics and their writers � nearly all white � now admit to The New York Times�s Bill Carter that because of race and because there is nothing �buffoonish� about Obama � and because many in their audiences are intoxicated by him and resistant to seeing him skewered � he has not been flayed by the sort of ridicule that diminished Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.

�There�s a weird reverse racism going on,� Jimmy Kimmel said.

Carter also observed that there�s no easy comedic �take� on Obama, �like allegations of Bill Clinton�s womanizing, or President Bush�s goofy bumbling or Al Gore�s robotic personality.�

At first blush, it would seem to be a positive for Obama that he is hard to mock. But on second thought, is it another sign that he�s trying so hard to be perfect that it�s stultifying? Or that eight years of W. and Cheney have robbed Democratic voters of their sense of humor?

Certainly, as the potential first black president, and as a contender with tender experience, Obama must feel under strain to be serious.

But he does not want the �take� on him to become that he�s so tightly wrapped, overcalculated and circumspect that he can�t even allow anyone to make jokes about him, and that his supporters are so evangelical and eager for a champion to rescue America that their response to any razzing is a sanctimonious: Don�t mess with our messiah!

If Obama keeps being stingy with his quips and smiles, and if the dominant perception of him is that you can�t make jokes about him, it might infect his campaign with an airless quality. His humorlessness could spark humor.

On Tuesday, Andy Borowitz satirized on that subject. He said that Obama, sympathetic to comics� attempts to find jokes to make about him, had put out a list of official ones, including this:

�A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, �I was expecting the farmer�s daughter.� Barack Obama replies, �She�s not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American dream.� �

John McCain�s Don Rickles routines � �Thanks for the question, you little jerk� � can fall flat. But he seems like a guy who can be teased harmlessly. If Obama offers only eat-your-arugula chiding and chilly earnestness, he becomes an otherworldly type, not the regular guy he needs to be.

He�s already in danger of seeming too prissy about food � a perception heightened when The Wall Street Journal reported that the planners for Obama�s convention have hired the first-ever Director of Greening, the environmental activist Andrea Robinson. She in turn hired an Official Carbon Adviser to �measure the greenhouse-gas emissions of every placard, every plane trip, every appetizer prepared and every coffee cup tossed.�

The �lean �n� green� catering guidelines, The Journal said, bar fried food and instruct that, �on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include �at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white.� (Garnishes don�t count.) At least 70% of the ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel during transportation.�

Bring it on, Ozone Democrats! Because if Obama gets elected and there is nothing funny about him, it won�t be the economy that�s depressed. It will be the rest of us.

I'm fairly annoyed with my fellow Obama supporters' outrage over the New Yorker. You might not have found it funny, but it's amazing to me how people are complaining about the cover of a left-leaning magazine that contained an article that was favorable to Obama.


Posted by robstar on Jul-17-2008 00:38:

If you don't find this funny you're a terrorist!


Posted by Groundhog Boy on Jul-17-2008 01:00:

quote:
Rush Limbaugh was right
The blogosphere's reaction to the New Yorker cover proves that the Bush era has killed a lot of liberals' sense of humor. And that's not funny.

By Gary Kamiya

Jul. 15, 2008 | It's official: The Bush era has made liberals so terrified of right-wing smears it has caused them to completely lose their sense of humor.

Much as I hate to repeat one of Rush Limbaugh's flat, stale and unprofitable applause lines, that's the only conclusion I can draw after witnessing the left-wing blogosphere's bizarre reaction to the New Yorker cover depicting Barack Obama in the Oval Office as a dishdasha-clad Muslim terrorist, exchanging a "terrorist fist jab" with Michelle Obama, who is dressed like a latter-day Angela Davis with huge 'fro, combat boots, assault rifle and bandolier of bullets -- while Osama bin Laden looks approvingly on from a picture frame and an American flag burns merrily in the presidential fireplace. To judge from the reaction of much of the left, you'd think that New Yorker editor David Remnick had morphed into some kind of hideous hybrid of Roger Ailes and Roland Barthes and was waging an insidious Semiotic War against Obama.

I don't know what lugubrious planet these people are on, but I definitely don't want any of them writing material for Jon Stewart.

After 9/11, some pious nitwits, suffering from an America-centrism akin to the medieval belief that the Earth was the center of the universe, intoned that "irony was dead." Seven years later, they've been proven right -- but not in the way they intended. Irony may have been killed, but not by sincerity -- it's been killed by cynicism. Vast swaths of the left have apparently been so traumatized by the Big Lie techniques employed by the Bush administration, its media lickspittles like Fox News, and the right-wing attack machine that they have come to regard all images or texts that contain negative stereotypes as too politically dangerous to run. If you satirically depict Obama as an Islamist terrorist, in this view, you are only reinforcing and giving broader currency to right-wing smears.

Since the essence of satire is exaggerating negative stereotypes, this means that satire itself is off limits. Or, at least, all satire except that which the cowering -- but oh so semiotically sophisticated -- left-wing commentariat deems to be sufficiently broad-brush and polemical to pass its funny test. There's no arguing taste in humor, of course, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that those who find Barry Blitt's drawing completely unfunny have traded their appreciation of subtlety and nuance for an instrumental, ends-obsessed, political-unto-death worldview. The prominent blogger Atrios, for example, writes of the cartoon, "It obviously was an attempt at satire, but it fails. It represents the basic stuff that you get from the Right about Obama, but it neither mocks nor exaggerates them." Atrios may be reading secret e-mails from Fox News containing Protocols of the Elders of Obama that I haven't seen -- oops, I shouldn't have made a joking reference to that noxious forgery, because by so doing I have played into the hands of anti-Semites -- but I haven't come across any right-wing hits on Obama that feature an American flag burning in the White House fireplace and a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall.

The more brain-dead among the posters on left-wing blogs angrily denounce the New Yorker cover as itself racist. Merely to acknowledge racism, for them, is to be racist. This view, which in its Manichaean purity oddly recalls the hysterical reaction of some Muslims to the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed, represents the reductio ad absurdum of political correctness: Not a single work of satire could ever pass this paranoid test. With some exceptions (notably the conservative commentator Michelle Bernard on "Hardball"), few of the pundits who criticized the New Yorker went this far: They merely expressed outrage, or concern, that by running the cartoon, the New Yorker was unwittingly carrying the right's water for it.

A couple of points need to be made about this. Yes, the right wing is obviously trying to paint Obama as a Muslim terrorist sympathizer -- it's the only card they have to play. And yes, there are ways that the mainstream media can, and has, "laundered" such scurrilous smears -- Fox News is expert at them. ("Tonight at 8: Is Obama a Muslim fanatic, or merely a white-hating traitor? We report, you decide.") But it should be obvious that there's a fundamental difference between mocking something and laundering it. Some on the left, however, are so terrified that Americans, in their cosmic stupidity, cannot distinguish between satire and smear that they reject satire. After Obama wins, they decree, there will be time for all the sophisticated ha-ha. But right now, imagery must be as tightly controlled as at an exhibition of Stalinist realism paintings. As Ari Fleischer said, we must all watch what we do, watch what we say.

Such reactions are utterly political and deeply skeptical: They're based on the belief that journalism is all about power, that it must cater to the lowest common denominator, and that the critical and ironic thinking satire requires is an outmoded luxury. As Alternet's Don Hazen wrote, "Framing the Obamas in this way completely reinforces the negative and harbored feelings that they are absurdly trying to satirize. This is satire run amuck, and it is a perfect example of how antiquated notions of journalism can play a role in provoking the worst of stereotypes and off-the-wall fantasies."

When I hear expressions like "antiquated notions of journalism" being tossed casually about like this, no matter how good the writer's intentions, I can't help recalling that memorable German line misattributed to Goering: "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver." Those "notions" have been around for a long time, at least since Swift -- is there some reason they have suddenly become inoperative?

In a certain way, the left's reaction is reminiscent of mainstream Democrats' refusal to challenge Bush on Iraq. They, too, were instrumentalists and amateur semioticians, worrying that the GOP would "frame" them, to use linguist George Lakoff's concept, as weaklings and wimps. But they were wrong, just as those who advise the liberal media to deal with the right-wing smear campaign against Obama by refusing to acknowledge it are wrong. In any case, once journalists and artists start censoring themselves because they're afraid their work will play into political attacks or have other unwanted political consequences, they've started down a dark road, one that ends up with party hacks celebrating the latest Fearless Leader. What's the point of electing a progressive president if you lose your soul in the process?

Beyond these considerations, there's something ridiculous about the whole debate. The New Yorker is the most prestigious magazine of its type in the country, with a circulation of over a million and a disproportionate influence, but it's not a network or CNN or Fox. If the New Yorker starts trickling down to supermarket racks in Des Moines, Iowa, as the critics seem to fear, the GOP is toast. The only demographic it's going to swing is between 110th Street and Canal. What next -- riots in the left-wing blogosphere because the New York Review of Books runs a cartoon depicting McCain as Superman?

There is a also glaring lack of consensus among the critics about the very nature of the cartoon. Some find it too bland and safe, while others argue that it's OK for the New Yorker's elite readers but too edgy for the masses. Those who find it toothless seem to do so in large part because it's on the cover of the New Yorker. It's all about context: If the same illustration appeared on the cover of Time, they would "read" it differently because Time lacks the New Yorker's arch, self-satisfied, knowing aura. By this way of thinking, what in Remnick's magazine looks bland (and therefore a deplorable conduit for right-wing stereotypes) would look like David Levine, George Grosz or Sue Coe if it ran on the cover of either a conventional newsmagazine like Time or a more polemical one, like the New Republic, Salon or National Review.

It's true that the eclectic aesthetic universe of New Yorker covers, one better mannered than most magazines and also more open to fine art, places the Obama cartoon in a slightly more ambiguous context, and makes it feel a little more bemused and a little less incendiary. This probably explains why a number of critics, including the Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum, have argued that the cartoon should have explicitly linked the Obama-as-terrorist image to McCain or the GOP. I don't agree that that heavy-handed move would necessarily have improved the cartoon, but it would have pulled the New Yorker off its throne a bit. There's definitely a tension, and not always a harmonious one, between the New Yorker's carefully cultivated august stance and its laudable desire to mix it up and brawl.

But this whole discussion is mostly irrelevant. A satirical drawing is a satirical drawing, regardless of which magazine's cover it runs on. Regardless of the context, one can still "read" Blitt's drawing, and what it says is very clear: These attacks are ridiculous and absurd, and it's OK to laugh at them in any way you want. If you want to smile over sherry in a drawing room, go right ahead.

The magazine's left-wing critics, understandably scared (and perhaps deafened) by the vicious noise of the right-wing attack machine, are demanding that those on the left also turn their amps up to full Spinal Tap 11. Cartoons to be chuckled at over sherry, they say, are not funny and are too dangerous. (What they don't say is that when everything is dangerous, nothing is funny.) Ugly times call for ugly tactics. Noise calls for noise.

As P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster would say, "What a frightful idea!" I don't like to drink sherry all the time, and I yield to no one in my fondness for Hendrix-like volume and over-the-top polemics. But one satirical New Yorker cover is not going to release the evil demons of the right. And who wants a world without sherry -- or, for that matter, stilettos? Somehow lost in all this is the fact that Blitt's cartoon is actually a sharp object. It's still four months until the election. Leave the "Fargo" wood chipper off for a while longer and let us enjoy a little bloodletting in peace.

-- By Gary Kamiya
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya..._yorker_cartoon


Posted by Clovis on Jul-17-2008 01:14:

Fantastic piece.


Posted by The17sss on Jul-17-2008 01:46:

Good article. A couple of critiques though. It's funny to see Kamiya refer to Rush's applause lines as unprofitable... he just signed a deal worth twice as much as A-Rod's. Secondly, the idea that the Left became intellectual cowards because of the big meanies in the opposition rediscovers the irony Kamiya claims was lost after 9/11. He's busting up the �left-wing commentariat� as �cowering�, but then puts the blame on Fox News and the Bush administration. Even if we accept the accusations of a �right-wing attack machine�, that wouldn�t cause cowardice as much as reveal it. It doesn�t take courage to speak out when no one opposes you, Gary K. But I do like the rest of that... nice post


Posted by Clovis on Jul-17-2008 01:55:

The fact that Rush is so rich is utterly depressing.


Posted by The17sss on Jul-17-2008 02:44:

haha... Love him or hate him, you gotta respect that he has become this successful with no help from anyone, and about 20 years of producers and station owners telling him he would never make it in radio and to find another career.


Posted by Clovis on Jul-17-2008 04:15:

quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
haha... Love him or hate him, you gotta respect that he has become this successful with no help from anyone, and about 20 years of producers and station owners telling him he would never make it in radio and to find another career.



Thats akin to saying I should respect Hitler's rise to the top on Germany.


Posted by The17sss on Jul-17-2008 05:12:

quote:
Originally posted by Clovis
Thats akin to saying I should respect Hitler's rise to the top on Germany.


Dude you crack me up. We disagree on almost everything political but you say some pretty funny shit. props

*initiating fist bump*


Posted by Lebezniatnikov on Jul-17-2008 05:28:

quote:
Originally posted by Clovis
Thats akin to saying I should respect Hitler's rise to the top on Germany.


Seriously. "Success" and respect don't come hand in hand. To whom much is given much is expected.


Posted by Clovis on Jul-17-2008 06:10:

Rush Limbaugh is just a terrible, terrible person. I think only Ann Coulter can out-do him.


Posted by The17sss on Jul-17-2008 06:40:

quote:
Originally posted by Clovis
Rush Limbaugh is just a terrible, terrible person. I think only Ann Coulter can out-do him.


I love the guy... he stands up for what he believes in and loves his country. Are these the things a horrible person would do?

Limbaugh holds an annual fundraising telethon called the "EIB Cure-a-Thon" for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. In 2006 the EIB Cure-a-Thon conducted its 16th annual telethon, raising $1.7 million; totaling over $15 million since the first cure-a-thon. According to Leukemia and Lymphoma Society annual reports, Limbaugh personally contributed between $100,000 and $499,999 from 2000 - 2005 and 2007, and Limbaugh claims to have contributed around $250,000 in 2003, 2004 and 2005. NewsMax reported Limbaugh donated $250,000 in 2006, but the Society's 2006 annual report placed him in the $500,000 to $999,999 category. Limbaugh donated $320,000 during the 2007 Cure-a-Thon which the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society reported had raised $3.1 million. On his radio program April 18, 2008, Limbaugh claimed to pledge $400,000 to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society after being challenged by two listeners to increase his initial pledge of $300,000.

Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation
Limbaugh conducts an annual drive to help the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation collect contributions to provide scholarships for children of Marines and law enforcement officers/agents who have died in the line of duty. The foundation was the beneficiary of a record $2.1 million eBay auction in October 2007 after Limbaugh listed for sale a letter critical of him signed by 41 Democratic senators and pledged to match the selling price, which he did by donating $2.1 million of his own money.


Posted by Krypton on Jul-17-2008 11:21:

Rush Limbaugh is an authoritarian follower conservative. One who rarely questions authority, especially when he agrees with that authority. He is self-righteous, hypocritical, and supremely loyal to the Republican Party, not to principles. He plays partisan politics and cares nothing for objectivity or political comprimise. We can thank the likes of him for moving the Republican Party so far to the right, that is endangers the very fabric of our Republic.


Posted by LazFX on Jul-17-2008 14:15:

quote:
Originally posted by Krypton
Rush Limbaugh is an authoritarian follower conservative. One who rarely questions authority, especially when he agrees with that authority. He is self-righteous, hypocritical, and supremely loyal to the Republican Party, not to principles. He plays partisan politics and cares nothing for objectivity or political comprimise. We can thank the likes of him for moving the Republican Party so far to the right, that is endangers the very fabric of our Republic.


+1

Him and those like him, Ruined the GOP...

but I do listen to him from time to time just to gauge what the ignopop party is doing... and saying.....
taking cues from a pain killer addicted sex freak.....

only in America


Posted by The17sss on Jul-17-2008 17:59:

quote:
Originally posted by Krypton
He is self-righteous, hypocritical, and supremely loyal to the Republican Party, not to principles. He plays partisan politics and cares nothing for objectivity or political comprimise.


You have that backwards. he is loyal to pure conservative principals, NOT the republican party. He has not, and will not endorse any republican in this race, especially McCain who he openly chastises on a daily basis for abandoning his own conservatism and trying so desperately to please the democrats.

And, who doesn't play partisan politics? The democrats? There is ZERO compromise for deomcrats so don't give me that B.S. At least McCain is willing to cross the aisle... Compromise for liberal democrats entails people from the right making concessions in their direction... you'll never see any liberal democrat compromise, cross the aisle, or drift to the right.

People who despise Rush so much have never actually spent any time listening to him. They make judgements based on what they hear from media outlets who hate him. I find that rather close minded for a group who claim to be so progressive.


Posted by Clovis on Jul-17-2008 18:14:

quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
People who despise Rush so much have never actually spent any time listening to him. They make judgements based on what they hear from media outlets who hate him. I find that rather close minded for a group who claim to be so progressive.



Not so, I've listened to him several times at my last job, and not for 10 minutes but for the duration of his show. It is very eye opening.

He preaches a diatribe of backwards ideas and plays to middle america's fears. My thoughts on him and his complete hipocrisy are best summed up by Hendrick Hertzberg:

quote:
Rush in Rehab
by Hendrik Hertzberg October 27, 2003



"We do not need General Clark or any of the rest of you liberals. We don�t need to change the definition of patriotism in order to conform to the antiwar, hate-America-first radicalism of the Democrat leadership. And that�s what this is all about.�

In case you don�t happen to be a regular listener to �The Rush Limbaugh Show,� the above is a fair sample of the sort of thing the star of the show has been saying lately, or at any rate was saying until a week ago, when he checked in to a drug rehabilitation center. It�s not very different from what he�s been saying throughout the twenty years he�s been talking about politics on the radio. We know the sample is fair, because it was the featured quote last Thursday on the home page of Limbaugh�s own Web site, emblazoned in big blue letters right next to the smiling photograph of the patient himself. Limbaugh�s target this time was Wesley Clark, because Clark is a leading candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination. As a four-star general, Clark led nato�s first and so far only major military action, which put a stop to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo; as a combat officer in Vietnam, he was severely wounded and awarded the silver star, the bronze star, and a purple heart. The person impugning his patriotism, Limbaugh, sat out the war in Vietnam�though not very comfortably, one must assume, since, as Joe Conason noted in Salon, the future scourge of cowards and slackers avoided the draft on account of �a persistent boil on his backside.�

Limbaugh is a prime example of what is known as a Chicken Hawk�a noisy, preening master of the martial art of talking who, back when it was a question of getting anywhere near harm�s way for the sake of his country, discovered that he had (as Vice-President Cheney once put it, explaining his own absence from the fray) �other priorities.� He has now joined another �lite corps�the Vice Versa Virtuecrats, they might be called�whose members crusade against �moral relativism� and in favor of absolute standards of right and wrong backed up by draconian punishments while indulging themselves in devilment on the side. Like Newt Gingrich, who vowed to attack Bill Clinton in every speech for hiding his sad little dalliance with Monica Lewinsky while he himself was carrying on a years-long affair with a congressional staffer young enough to be his daughter, and William J. Bennett, who made millions promoting flinty self-discipline while gambling away comparable amounts in Las Vegas fleshpots, Limbaugh took a stern line on demon dope (�If people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up�) while himself possessing and consuming controlled substances in prodigious quantities. In Limbaugh�s case, the difficulty goes beyond an embarrassing inconsistency between professed beliefs and private behavior, because the �problem� he has acknowledged having�being �addicted to prescription pain medication��correlates strongly with committing acts that the law defines as crimes.

Limbaugh�s colleagues in the right-wing jabber industry have come up with a consistent set of talking points in making the case that, in Ann Coulter�s words, �Rush�s behavior was not all that dissolute.� One point is that it was �highly courageous� of Limbaugh to admit his addiction, as Brent Bozell wrote. This would be more persuasive if Limbaugh�s admission had come before rather than after his addiction was described in detail in a National Enquirer story�a story whose essential outlines have since been confirmed by the non-supermarket press and whose particulars have been disputed by no one. (Limbaugh himself�presumably on the advice of his lawyer, Roy Black, whose other celebrity clients have included William Kennedy Smith and Marv Albert�has said only that the �stories you�ve heard contain inaccuracies and distortions.�) Another point is that Limbaugh�s ability to do his job while addicted is a testament to his greatness. �If this is what he�s like on painkillers, imagine when he�s off them!� Coulter exclaimed, adding, �Whoa! Set him loose once he�s gone through detox!�

A third talking point is that Limbaugh is not like other junkies�the bad kind, who use drugs like heroin and cocaine. Sean Hannity, the Fox TV host, discerned a �difference between somebody who, as part of a medical treatment, had these things prescribed and it got out of hand over time, and somebody who is using drugs recreationally.� Neal Boortz, an Atlanta-based radio shouter, said on MSNBC, �The addiction happened while he was under a legal regimen of these drugs. That is not at all the way people get addicted to heroin.� And G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate burglar turned pundit, said, �I would distinguish Rush�s situation from someone who was a recreational drug user and was caught playing with fire and got addicted�moved up from marijuana to cocaine or something of that sort.�

Actually, under federal law there is no distinction between Oxycontin, Limbaugh�s reported pill of choice, and drugs like cocaine, methadone, and opiates. All are Schedule II drugs, which have medical uses but a high potential for abuse, and simple possession of any of them is punishable by up to a year�s imprisonment. Though Limbaugh may well have been introduced to painkillers via a doctor�s prescription, the suggestion that he became addicted to them under a doctor�s care is almost certainly false. So is the suggestion that he wasn�t taking them �recreationally��i.e., to get high. The prescribed dose of Oxycontin, one tablet every twelve hours, is usually sufficient to relieve severe pain. The Enquirer has Limbaugh purchasing nearly twelve thousand during a four-month period in 2001�enough to soothe his back troubles for sixteen years.

Limbaugh deserves compassion no less (and no more) than any other drug addict. It would be a travesty of justice to lock him up for ingesting chemicals, an activity whose only victim, if any, has been himself. But the four hundred and fifty thousand Americans already in jail for breaking the drug laws also represent a failure of justice, and an even bigger failure of policy. (The United States imprisons more people for drug violations than the European Union imprisons for all causes combined, and the E.U.�s population exceeds the U.S.�s by a hundred million.) By the same token, it would be a travesty if Oxycontin�which has eased the sufferings of millions�were to be demonized as other psychoactive drugs have been demonized. Even if Limbaugh was using his drugs less to relieve pain than to procure pleasure, or if the pain he sought to relieve was less physical than existential, that may have been a problem, but it shouldn�t be a crime.

Limbaugh�s current sojourn in drug treatment is his third. If he fails again, he should have a fourth chance, and a fifth. Perhaps he will reflect upon the fact that if he weren�t quite so lucky�if he were poorer and darker of skin, and if he had been obliged from the start to seek his treatment under the tender auspices of the criminal-justice system�he would already have had his third strike. Such a change of heart seems unlikely; drug rehabilitation comes easier than the political kind. Limbaugh may be a Chicken Hawk in the war on drugs, but that doesn�t mean he deserves to be cannon fodder.


Posted by The17sss on Jul-17-2008 18:40:

Wesley Clark... a 4 star general who was essentially fired by the Sec. of Defense. He also said this onn May 11, 2001 (speaking to the Pulaski County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner in Little Rock, Arkansas):
"And I'm very glad we've got the great team in office, men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice... people I know very well -- our president George W. Bush. We need them there." My brother also served in Kosovo under Clark and has plenty of first hand knowledge of his decisions to do things his own way for political expediency. He (Clark) even said if only Karl Rove would have returned his phone calls, he would have been on the Republican side while running for office. So, I don't hold him up as any bastion of integrity.

As for Rush, yeah.... he went to rehab 5 years ago and has been clean since. He makes no excuses for what he did and fully admits his mistakes and the experience actually saved him. Everyone thinks the Josh Hamilton story in baseball is so great... getting hooked on crack and falling into an abyss of failure and almost death, and then getting clean and rising to the top. If Rush went through that rehab ordeal, and used it as a successful learning experience, he shouldn't still be beaten up about it.

If you still have those strong opinions about Rush, and you listen to him regularly, then I can't refer to you personally; you're an exception.. but for the most part when people do attack him or say they hate him or that he's a fat fuck who knows nothing, when I ask them if they have ever listen to him they say no.


Posted by Clovis on Jul-17-2008 18:49:

quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
As for Rush, yeah.... he went to rehab 5 years ago and has been clean since. He makes no excuses for what he did and fully admits his mistakes and the experience actually saved him. Everyone thinks the Josh Hamilton story in baseball is so great... getting hooked on crack and falling into an abyss of failure and almost death, and then getting clean and rising to the top. If Rush went through that rehab ordeal, and used it as a successful learning experience, he shouldn't still be beaten up about it.




So its ok for Rush, who dodged Vietnam because of a boil on his backside, to call in question Clark's patriotism, but when Wes Clark simply states that being shot down in a jet is not a qualification for war, it's in poor taste and turns into a big deal?

That irrelevant issue aside, apparently you missed the points raised by the article. The guy is a complete and utterly sad hypocrite, who has been preaching one hard line message after another while not once applying the same black & white moral judgement to himself.


Posted by The17sss on Jul-17-2008 19:02:

The thing with Clark is another issue. But I've heard Rush speak many times (post rehab) about the hypocracy of his life at the time he was going through the addiction. He admits about himself exactly what you are saying about that time in his life... and with sincerity. He never claims to have the moral high ground, and I think as long as he continues to demonstrate he has changed for the better with his personal choices that made him a hypocrite at the time, he can't be labled as one now.


Posted by Clovis on Jul-17-2008 19:24:

quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
The thing with Clark is another issue. But I've heard Rush speak many times (post rehab) about the hypocracy of his life at the time he was going through the addiction. He admits about himself exactly what you are saying about that time in his life... and with sincerity. He never claims to have the moral high ground, and I think as long as he continues to demonstrate he has changed for the better with his personal choices that made him a hypocrite at the time, he can't be labled as one now.



If you can't see whats wrong with him based on what was pointed out I can't help you. He still espouses the same shit moral standards and expectations of others. This is only one small area in which he is hypocritical, his Vietnam dodging is yet another. Point being, he talks the talk and thats pretty much it. I think the message he sends is detrimental to Americans. It's propaganda, plain and simple, and more people need to understand it as such.

As for him making no excuses:

quote:
Limbaugh blames his drug addiction (which, as Chavets does not note, involved violations of the law) on �my childhood desire for acceptance,� an excuse he�d be unlikely to accept from, say, Kitty Dukakis

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blo...hertzberg?xrail


Posted by Krypton on Jul-17-2008 20:10:

quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
You have that backwards. he is loyal to pure conservative principals, NOT the republican party.

He has not, and will not endorse any republican in this race, especially McCain who he openly chastises on a daily basis for abandoning his own conservatism and trying so desperately to please the democrats.


Conservative principles you say? Is hypocrisy one of them?

Limbaugh spends far more time deriding anything and everything the Obama campaign says or does, Obama's wife included, and for all the rhetoric against McCain, is pure bullshit. We all know who he's going to vote for. "If McCain wins the primary, I'm voting for Hillary Clinton." Really Rush???

quote:
And, who doesn't play partisan politics? The democrats? There is ZERO compromise for deomcrats so don't give me that B.S. At least McCain is willing to cross the aisle... Compromise for liberal democrats entails people from the right making concessions in their direction... you'll never see any liberal democrat compromise, cross the aisle, or drift to the right.


Zero comprimise you say? The religious right controls the Republican Party. Tell me, who are the people least likely to comprimise? PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE THEY ARE CARRYING OUT GOD'S MISSION! I'm sorry, but in today's government, it is the Republicans, most notably, the Bush Administration who refuse to comprimise.

quote:
People who despise Rush so much have never actually spent any time listening to him. They make judgements based on what they hear from media outlets who hate him. I find that rather close minded for a group who claim to be so progressive.


How would you know whether I listen to Rush or not? See, you don't. Guess where I got the Rush quote, "If McCain wins the primary, I will vote for Hillary Clinton."? FROM LISTENING TO HIS SHOW. I have listened to hour upon hour of his show. Sometimes, he'd piss me off so much, I changed the station. All my opinions of him come from myself and myself alone, so let's cut out the "media outlets" bullshit.

If opposition to...

1. Politicizing the justice department (and having Mr. Rush defend it)
2. Going to war on false pretenses
3. Carrying out covert survellience on innocent American citizens
4. Substantially increasing government expenditures CONTRARY TO CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES

makes me "close minded", then I must be mentally retarded...[/sarcasm]


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