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With the coronation of George Bush as president in 2000, despite the fact hundreds of thousands more citizens had voted for his opponent, a new level of meanness has been introduced into America's domestic and international politics. America's claim to being a civilized nation is now very much in question.
George Bush has shown that America can be a bully, not only to the world but to its own citizens. He talks but doesn't make sense -- he says things that are patently ridiculous and nonsensical, yet the media hardly ever notices. He's discovered the power of being a bully, because there's nothing else persuasive about him. But he gets away with it because the media ?is, for whatever reasons, letting him get away with it.
Before Bush, leaders usually tried to rule by eloquence, by wit, by powerful arguments. But Bush wins by bullying and intimidation. And why not? It's a style that has served the four men we will be talking about here well over the years.
It might be argued that he gets away with it because the country has been burdened with the television generation. Ignorance has been enshrined since television took a firm hold of our national consciousness.
The one good thing about the Gang of Four is that it seems as if they eventually get their comeuppance. Thus the victories that come to bullies like Bush often turn out to be pyrrhic victories. But lots of people suffer in the meanwhile - the civilians of Iraq, the financial well-being and civil liberties of Americans. It sometimes seems as if the whole nation, the whole world, is marching back to the Dark Ages. Bush and his Gang of Four are truly the American Taliban.
It provides some comic relief when these people end up looking pitiful or like kooks. But unfortunately they have real political power. Rush Limbaugh, for example, has become a multimillionaire by pushing right-wing nostrums. He and Newt Gingrich teamed up to push the "Contract on America." Also involved were Henry Hyde, a Republican congressman from suburban Chicago who has specialized in "family values" by opposing all kinds of abortion, and then there's that famed man of the cloth, Jerry Fallwell, who created the far right fundamentalist religious movement who provide the storm troopers for Bush - but more about these folks a little later.
??All these men - these soldiers of the "Reagan Revolution" - have little grace or charm. As bullies, they are big on getting revenge. That is the hallmark of bullies. That was the subject of Alfred Jarry, the French playwright who wrote the play "Ubu Roi." These Ubus, unfortunately, have had a tremendously deleterious effect on the American body politic as well as the American psyche.
As an example, remember what happened when the Republicans decided to go after Tom Daschle, who became Majority Senate leader when Sen. Jeff Jeffords of Vermont defected to the Democrats early in G.W. Bush's administration? Plainly they were motivated by revenge. In part Jeffords defected because, as a moderate Republican, he was being treated as a pariah by the incoming President. Jeffords did not become a Democrat, but instead became an Independent. But the effect was to make Daschle the majority leader.
So the heat was turned on.
The bully mastermind of them all, Karl Rove, Bush's chief political guru and operative who keeps his offices in the White House, put out orders to get Daschle. Rush Limbaugh was told to take the initial shots. Suddenly Limbaugh started calling Daschle, a rather inoffensive, mild-mannered milquetoast liberal, "El Diablo."
The way Al Franken tells the story, Limbaugh was supposed to soften up Daschle's flanks by getting his 20 million or so "dittoheads" (Limbaugh's own word for his loyal followers) to spread the word. Then in the fall of 2001, ads began appearing in Daschle's district comparing "El Diablo" to Osama bi
n Laden, Saddam Hussein and the American Taliban John Walker Lindh. One of these ads even asked the question, "What do Saddam Hussein and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle have in common?" The ad's answer: " ... Neither man wants America to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
Franken, ?a former "Saturday Night Live" veteran who wrote the book Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot And Other Observations, talked about another telling moment in Mr. Limbaugh's not so glorious career. Just before the 2002 elections, the man who was the conscience of the Senate, Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, died in an airplane crash. With the Senate so closely divided, it was a terrible loss to the Democrats. But not just for that reason were people upset. Wellstone was a rarity among Democrats. He stood up to the Bush juggernaut in no uncertain terms and he refused to be slowed down by the bullying tactics of the Bushies.
When a memorial was held for Wellstone, it was an intensely emotional and cathartic thing. People were suspicious that maybe what had happened to Wellstone happened just because he did stand up to Bush. People didn't say so out loud, exactly, but many were thinking that it might have been no accident that brought Wellstone down. Everyone knew that Rove and Bush would stop at nothing to win. They were bullies not just with words, but even worse "dirty tricks."
So the last thing any of them wanted to see at Wellstone's memorial were Republicans. Wellstone's admirers wanted the memorial to be a statement of the need to continue his legacy of fighting for social justice. That is obviously what Wellstone would have wanted. The presence of piously grieving Republicans coming to say goodbye to Wellstone at the memorial did not bring out the most polite behavior in these people. Some of the Republicans were booed. They got all upset because they weren't made to feel welcome. Why should they have been welcomed?
When is the last time you talked politics with your dog?
The level of chicanery among this Gang of Four can be measured in a related matter. Two days after Wellstone's death, former Vice President Walter Mondale was being urged to replace Wellstone as a candidate. Limbaugh's old pal Newt Gingrich weighed in with some adroit lying, hoping, no doubt, to spread rumors among the grieving Minnesota Democrats. Gingrich chose that time to say that Mondale had chaired a commission that was for the privatization of Social Security, and also raise the retirement age.
He neglected to mention that the commission report (from The Center for Strategic and International Studies) had a minority report attached to it - written by Mondale. [In the minority report,] Mondale said he strongly opposed the recommendation because he did not want to privatize Social Security in any way.
You must understand that Republicans have been trying to destroy Social Security ever since it was created by President Roosevelt during the Great Depression years. In those days Republicans simply opposed Social Security, but as more and more people came to rely on it, Republicans had to take a different tack. They had to talk about privatizing Social Security, not eliminating it, even if for all practical purposes both actions produce the same result.
Putting funds in the pockets of Wall Street is, of course, a guaranteed way to make sure Social Security does not stay solvent. Wall Street has always been a gambler's game played successfully over the long haul by the big boys - not the little old ladies who depend on Social Security to stay alive.
We now see President Bush trying to destroy Medicare and Social Security by the technique of "starving the beast." That's far-right lingo for bankrupting these programs, either by having expensive wars, like the one in Iraq, or Bush's recent prescription drug program which spends billions not on drugs for poor seniors, but on giving money to the pharmaceutical companies.
Of course hypocrisy and just plain old lying has always has been the hallmark of the far right. The Big Lie of the Nazis was the great pioneering effort in this regard.
You might be excused for thinking there is indeed some justice in this poor old world because in 2003, Limbaugh had to publicly admit he was a drug addict. He was addicted to oxycontin, sometimes known as "cowboy heroin." Perhaps among his legions of "dittohead" followers, Limbaugh didn't lose any credibility over this. But presumably he won't be able to speak out with quite the same "authority" he once did.
Limbaugh's old pal Newt Gingrich, the one-time leader of the House and father of "the Contract on America," became known as an adulterer, and a rather nasty one at that. He served divorce papers on his first wife when she was fighting for her life in a hospital room from uterine cancer.
Might Gingrich have suffered a loss of some his authority over his behavior? After all, he was an ally of the Christian Coalition. He is, supposedly, a Baptist. You have to believe there is some divine retribution yet alive in this world. When a couple of pious hypocrites like Limbaugh and Gingrich get revealed for being a dope addict and an adulterer, you would think they'd shut up, but of course it never works like that.
Limbaugh never was a very appetizing guy. He started out in radio as a "shock jock" -- ?in the tree-heavy small-town environment of California's state capital, Sacramento. That was way back in the '80s. He would trade insults with his listeners - nothing overtly political, in those days. All very hokey and small town. He was a very mean spirited guy - the kind of guy who you'd expect to kick a cripple, and a lot of his political spiel is the equivalent of that. Nonetheless, his blustery style proved a perfect match for his right-wing politics. So much so that he got rich when his spiel hit national radio in the 1990s. ?He adopted the politics of greed and meanness.
He got off to a good start by calling Amy Carter, daughter of President Jimmy Carter, "the most unattractive presidential daughter in the history of the country." But that was just a warmup. When Chelsea Clinton came along, he turned into some strange sort of stalker and he really outdid himself.
When Chelsea was 13, he did a gag on his television show with the Clinton's White House dog, clearly meant to say what a dog she was. ?Ha. Ha.
How much Limbaugh's being a dope addict will affect his credibility is hard to say. Right now he appears to be the only slightly diminished king of talk these days.
Maybe he will overcome, though, because he has Bush in his corner. Said the president, ?"Rush is a great American. I am confident he can overcome any obstacles he faces right now."
Rush and Gingrich share ?something in common.
They talk a lot about family values. Of course Rush has gone through three wives so far himself. No crime there.
But being a dope addict is considered a crime. Until now, Rush himself considered it a crime.
Limbaugh's second wife had to make her junior college dropout husband stop sitting around and eating too much and go out and do something appropriate for the "rugged individualist" he claimed to be. She got him to at least file for unemployment insurance.
You'll not be surprised to learn Limbaugh is a big hawk on the military, but naturally he got out of actually serving his country during Vietnam. Neither did Bush's Cheney or any of the other chickenhawks who pushed for war while serving in high paying jobs in the Pentagon. Curious.
If you're beginning to suspect that Rush does not always have a high regard for the truth, bingo. His whole spiel is based on a cavalier disregard for the truth. He revels in lying. Truth is just not important to him - it's practically irrelevant to him.
What is key about Limbaugh is who he speaks for. He speaks for the disaffected white guy in a small town who can't get a job because the country's been taken over by Jews, blacks, Asians and Latinos and that makes him angry. Limbaugh tells Bubba it's the fault of the liberals and minorities. And a lot of Bubbas listen to him - big time. They're the guys that Howard Dean was talking about when he said that he wanted to talk to the guys who drive pickup trucks with confederate decals and can't get a decent job.
Limbaugh is as vicious as they come. He has never stopped accusing Hiliary Clinton of killing Vincent Foster, for example. You could say he is shameless, but then what else could Limbaugh be but shameless? His tirades against ecology are breathtaking in their audacity and espousal of ignorance. There is no problem with ozone depletion, he insists. The problem isn't industrial - it's due to volcanoes, he says. There are too many trees in our forests. Too many spotted owls. "If the owl can't adapt to the superiority of humans, screw it ..." he said.
Limbaugh has been careful to avoid expressing overt anti-Semitism, but he isn't so careful about blacks. He once told a black caller, "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back." Or he opined, "Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson." He suggested that the NAACP "should get a liquor store and practice robberies." When a caller suggested black people should be heard, his response was "They are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares."
Some people, quite correctly, argue that turning the radio waves over to the far right was a total violation of the original "Fairness Doctrine" -- it was the law from 1949 until 1987 when Ronald Reagan ended it by starting to deregulate the broadcast media.
Limbaugh called the interest in reinstituting the "fairness doctrine" the "Hush Rush" plan, because he thought the fairness doctrine was aimed at him. ?In a way, Rush and all the other right-wing radio show hosts do show the need for a fairness doctrine.
The problem is that -- like Father Coughlin in the '30s, another neo-fascist radio commentator -- Limbaugh demonstrates a lot of political power by working hand in glove with Newt Gingrich. Coughlin was proud of his ability to give Roosevelt a lot of trouble. Limbaugh was a prime mover in organizing opposition to Clinton's early efforts to set up a national health plan, for example. He's regularly invited on major television shows as an "expert" on everything from global warming to feminism." In 1993, the National Review dubbed him the "Leader of the Opposition." In that role, he felt no compunction about declaring tobacco isn't addictive, dioxins are good for you -- and in general railing against efforts to clean up dangerous superfund sites, and liked to proclaim, in myriad ways, that Mexicans are stupid.
Everyone has heard his famous "feminazis" rant. According to him, "Women were doing quite well in this country before feminism came along." This will be interesting news to anyone who knows the history of feminism in America - feminism began as an offshoot of the abolitionist movement before the Civil War and, among other things, women wouldn't be allowed to vote if it weren't for the feminists who won for them that right in the early 20th century.
[TO BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT EDITION - Ed.]
LOS ANGELES, CA, USA - They're the most unappetizing gang of hypocrites and liars ever, these spawn of the "Reagan Revolution." We're talking about Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Jerry Fallwell and Henry Hyde.
?One of these --- not in person, of course --- was Rush Limbaugh, who said he felt "disgust" and was "depressed" and "embarrassed" and "near speechless" that some had felt it appropriate to express a political thought at a memorial for Wellstone. What balderdash!
dogshatebush.com
"There's nothing good about drug use," he once said. "We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying our country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so 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".
But now Rush has been caught. ?What is clear is that if he were ?a black or a Latino, he would already be languishing in prison somewhere.
LIONEL ROLFE is the author of Literary L.A., Fat Man on the Left and the forthcoming, "The Uncommon Friendship of Yaltah Menuhin and Willa Cather." Portions of this article will appear in Anna Nevenic's Hidden Agenda: Conservatives, Fundamentalists and the Republican Party.
WEB SITE PICK OF THE WEEK: If you listen to radio broadcast on the Web, we've got two fun places for you to go. Hear the likes of Al Franken and Jeneane Garafalo on AirAmerica Radio. Then could check out the younger generation of hell-raisers on Radio Subversion. Enjoy!
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