DrBacchus' Journal

Rush Limbaugh

lI may have mentioned, I've been listening to Rush Limbaugh, in an attempt to understand what people see in him, why people listen to him, and whether he actually has anything to say.

Well, I listened again today. I tried not to, but, you know, it's kinda like a train wreck. It's so hard to look away.

In today's demonstration of intellectual prowess, he "proved" that "the liberals" were wrong about the war by comparing how long things took. For example, it took less time to take Iraq than for Hillary Clinton to find missing legal documents. This, clearly, proves the the war was goodness and light, and that Hillary Clinton is evil. Clearly. I mean, how can you miss it?

Then, he went on to talk about how wrong "the liberals" were about the economy, by reading a New York Times op-ed piece by some well-know liberal I'd never heard of, and agreeing with every point that was made in the article, calling most of them patently obvious. I wasn't clear how this proved that the guy was wrong. Perhaps it means that "they" are only right when it's obvious? I dunno.

So, again, I find myself wondering, and coming down to two possibilities. Either Mr Limbaugh thinks that his audience is monumentally stupid, or he himself is monumentally stupid. When he says that Liberal Q said something which, clearly, only someone suffering from massive head trauma would actually say, I must conclude that either the "quotation" is taken grossly out of context, or that he made it up entirely. Yet, he's still got a high-rated radio show, 13 years on. I suppose there's a lot of evidence for the theory that his listeners are idiots. After all, they _voluntarily_ call themselves "ditto-heads", indicating that they never had an original thought of their own, but only spout what they hear him saying. They do *know* what "ditto" means, right? (Maybe not.)

And yet, so many of my very intelligent friends listen to him, and support the things that he says, that, surely, I must be missing something. Or he's a very effective con artist. Or, after listening to him for long enough, you stop hearing the logical falacies that are behind most of his claims.

Or maybe I'm just a liberal. ;-)

I guess what I need to do is, some time, sit down with one of these friends and listen to a recording of the show, so that we can pause it and discuss it. This sounds like a very interesting conversation.

Meanwhile, I think that I might just make a New Years resolution not to listen to him any more, since he just annoys me.

Posted by rbowen at December 31, 2003 02:22 PM | TrackBack