Bum’s Rush
… on Limbaugh, who made a stupid remark calling anti-war active duty soldiers “phony soldiers.”
Remind me not to vote for him for president. Not because he said something stupid and offensive, but because he’s a professional blowhard. Also, Imus. I’m not going to vote for Imus for president. Not because he said something stupid and offensive, but because he was never very funny, in addition to being a professional blowhard.* These things may help you decide whether to listen to these people, and by extention, whether their employers want to keep them on the air. Stupid, offensive things said by people running for president are more interesting and can be helpful in determining whether, ever, if pigs flew, you’d vote for them. They can also be fascinating as you watch the reaction. For example, when newspapers fall over themselves to claim a favored candidate apologized for saying something stupid and offensive, when in fact he didn’t.
America is a great country, and has the capacity to absorb a great deal of stupid offensiveness, and in fact retains a relatively high tolerance for stupid offensiveness though frankly I don’t think its high enough, especially given how selective the outrage can be sometimes.
Anyway, “phony soldiers” was a stupid and offensive thing to say about people who are doing their duty and could be killed or maimed whether they agree with what they’ve been asked to do or not. I’d be more inclined to call them “short-sighted” or “ill-informed” or maybe “disgruntled” soldiers. Beauchamp, now, that guy I’d call a phony soldier, even though he’s serving overseas and could get his head blown off. But that’s because of the sockpuppetry, the lies, the dishonoring of his comrades.
Should Congress condemn Limbaugh? The lefties are congratulating themselves for considering themselves above that, which is actually a way of saying they are PO’d that their Democratic-led Congress voted overwhelmingly to smack the New York Times and MoveOn last week.
A shock jock blurting out something stupid is an order of magnitude or two below one of the nation’s leading newspapers running a full-page ad, a half-price, full of insulting distortions about a wartime commander in the midst of critical hearings. I’d be inclined to think Congress has better things to do than waste its time trying to influence the New York Times or Rush Limbaugh, but seeing what Congress has been wasting it’s time with lately, the NYT vote was an improvement. And got more votes than most of what Congress has been wasting its time with lately. If they do go after Limbaugh for an offhand remark, they’ll have lowered the threshold so far that they won’t be able to not accomplish anything else, they’ll be so busy condemning idiotic and tasteless ads, blurtings, comic sketches, etc.
CLARIFICATION called for by a couple of readers. Limbaugh’s apparently refering to the actual phonies, the Jesse MacBeths, which is what he goes on about later. But he is well aware, or should be, that there have been a number of actual serving soldiers and combat veterans who have come out against the war, and a lot who have doubts. Which still makes the blanket dismissal stupid and offensive, though maybe unintentionally so:
CALLER: … what’s really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and spout to the media.
RUSH: The phony soldiers.
CALLER: Phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier and they’re proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice and they’re willing to sacrifice for the country.
RUSH: They joined to be in Iraq.
CALLER: A lot of people.
RUSH: You know where you’re going these days, the last four years, if you sign up. The odds are you’re going there or Afghanistan, or somewhere.
And some of them changed their minds, and have spoken out about it. I don’t agree with them, but that doesn’t make them phony soldiers.
Related, but different. Here’s Jeff at Protein Wisdom on the faux racism charges vs. O’Reilly over his rather clumsy effort to dispell stereotypes. Hey, where was all the lefty outrage vs. racism last week when Jesse Jackson accused Obama of “acting like he’s white” over Jena by failing to be sufficiently incensed over a situation it turns out no one outside of Jena knows that much about. Here’s a little more on Jackson, Jena, race and crime. It’s the strangest thing, how so much that gets called racism these days turns out not to be, or maybe a little more complicated or benign than anyone’s presenting it to be, and some of the people shouting loudest about it … turn out to be racists.
* Disclosure. As a professional blowhard, I vow never to vote for myself for president. Well, maybe a write-in. I reserve the right to change my mind about anything. Also, to say stupid, offensive things.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 1:25 pm on Friday, September 28, 2007
13 Responses to “Bum’s Rush”
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September 28th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Captain Ed has the context of what Rush said. He linked to Rush’s site as well…..where they have the transcript.
September 28th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
There is also a link at Limbaugh’s site to
youtube video
laying out the whole thing.
Media Matters, again.
September 28th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
He didn’t call soldiers who don’t support the war ‘phony’. He called people who said they were soldiers but were not ‘phony’.
September 28th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Rush Limbaugh And Dittoheads Try Unsuccessfully To Spin His Anti-Troop Comment
I’d already weighed in on this controversy yesterday — i.e., Rush Limbaugh’s chilling and quite offensive comment regarding left-leaning military members, tastelessly referring to them as “phony Soldiers”. I thought I had…
September 28th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Does anyone know of any critical comments by Limbaugh before this directed at anti-Iraq war active soldiers?
It seems to me that if indeed Limbaugh had meant the “phony soldiers” gibe to be directed at that group, there would be evidence of prior critical statements directed at them.
If there aren’t any, then Limbaugh has a strong defense. If there are, the gravamen from his critics is sounder. Sounder, not necessarily sound.
Gotta’ tip your hat off to Media Matters. They’re getting the MSM to listen to them. Fairly or not (and I’m not, let us say, a fan of Mr. Brock’s little outfit).
SMG
September 28th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
GTL, as has been noted (more than a few times)…
Not being able to make it in the marketplace of ideas (Air America ?) you guys glom onto and try to whip up some of the weirdest stuff.
chilling ? offensive ? One guy’s remark about one troop ?
“…have been bashing left-leaning troops and disrespecting them for YEARS and his disdain for half of the military…”
HALF the military ?
(How do you like your hyperbole, over easy, sunny side up ?)
FYI, “The Left” (near as I can tell) mainly gives quite a bit of lip service to “the troops”.
When I was in college, “the left” hated the military. I don’t think a kind of innate disdain is too different from today, see one William Jefferson Clinton as CIC for all those years. I think the contempt was mutual.
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
September 28th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Media Matters is pathetically trying to diss also as a function of not making it in the marketplace of ideas.
The MSM ?
Lord help us all.
September 28th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Did you see that Rush phonied up the version of the event when he put up in his defense? In fact, the clip he aired omitted a full 1 minute and 35 seconds of discussion that occurred between Limbaugh’s original “phony soldiers” comment and his subsequent reference to MacBeth.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200709280009?f=h_latest
September 28th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
[...] Quarters, TalkLeft, The Carpetbagger Report, News Hounds, Sister Toldjah, Taylor Marsh, Jules Crittenden, Think Progress, NewsBusters.org, Macsmind, Central Sanity, Crooks and Liars, AMERICAblog, Chris [...]
September 29th, 2007 at 1:08 am
Mark Foley all over again.
September 29th, 2007 at 1:17 am
Jules, you should really post the rest of the transcript for that conversation. Rush very clearly says he is talking about non-soldiers claiming to be soldiers just a few sentences after the point you ended the conversation.
It seems like you don’t truly believe he was talking about MacBeth types. Johnny Dollar has some pretty good proof.
September 29th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Going Phishing: Limbaugh and
After the MoveOn debacle, lefties are just itching for political payback, and they’ve seized on the Limbaugh story like a junky pumping up his last spoon of smack…
October 4th, 2007 at 1:54 am
I’m really surprised and saddened… that you fell for this phony attack on Limbaugh, Jules. How did you get in a position to accept unquestioningly the latest liberal faux outrage/cause celebre? After all the lies and misrepresentations you have, yourself, spotlighted on this site, how did you slip up this time?