{"id":1716,"date":"2009-03-08T17:50:38","date_gmt":"2009-03-09T00:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=1716"},"modified":"2009-03-08T20:45:02","modified_gmt":"2009-03-09T03:45:02","slug":"letter-to-my-niece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=1716","title":{"rendered":"Letter to My Niece"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of my Missouri relatives are registered Republicans, but I have a Show Me niece who is more Republican than most: she’s an up-and-comer in the party who was selected to spend a summer working as an intern at the Ronald Reagan Library.\u00a0 Smart as hell, too, this niece.\u00a0 I adore and admire her, so you may understand why I was shocked when she wrote on Facebook that she was “even more in love with Rush Limbaugh today than ever before, and . . . so grateful for his fearless spirit.”<\/span><\/p>\n

There’s something ungrounded in the way Limbaugh’s legions rush (ha ha, get it?) to his defense, regardless of what he’s done.\u00a0 Busted for using fake prescriptions to buy Oxycontin?\u00a0 Oh poor Rush!\u00a0 Playing “Barack the Magic Negro” during the campaign to belittle a black candidate?\u00a0 Oh he’s just an entertainer and besides can’t you take a harmless joke?\u00a0 Busted once again at an airport with a bag full of Oxycontin after allegedly finishing rehab?\u00a0 Michael Moore is fat!\u00a0 Saying he hopes Obama fails?\u00a0 Oh he’s just an entertainer and besides you’re taking it out of context, what he actually said was that he hopes Obama fails, which is different!\u00a0 You see the same thing with Mac users and Scientologists.\u00a0 They all have the same glassy eyes.<\/p>\n

Ah, but Rush expounds political and social opinions I agree with!\u00a0 Well, sure, but so does every redneck cracker at every truck stop and quickie oil change place in the country.\u00a0 Why put Rush on a pedestal and not Jimmy Bob?\u00a0 You want to talk about fearless spirit, Jimmy Bob ain’t afraid to use the words Rush brushes up against but then shys away from: nigger, kike, spic, cunt.\u00a0 Jimmy Bob’s got balls, and Truck Nutz\u2122<\/a> too!<\/p>\n

Is Rush fearless because he says what he thinks to a large radio audience?\u00a0 Like Don Imus?\u00a0 I guess if you only half-listen to Rush’s show you might think he’s confrontational and strong, but listen a little harder . . . he doesn’t actually confront anyone face to face.\u00a0 You might think you once heard him arguing with Hillary Clinton on his show, putting her down every time she opened her yap.\u00a0 No, what you actually heard was Rush playing tape-recorded scraps of things Hillary had said, hitting pause, then ranting into his microphone.\u00a0 Yes, he takes listeners’ calls on Fridays, but if he disagrees with them he just shouts louder and reaches for the disconnect button.\u00a0 I think he’s afraid of confrontation, frankly.\u00a0 When have you ever heard of him speaking before a hostile crowd?\u00a0 No, he picks his venues the same way George W. Bush did, carefully screening potential audiences to make sure they’re packed with friends and admirers.<\/p>\n

Dear niece, I’m proud of you for having convictions and taking an active role in party politics, whether I agree with your politics or not.\u00a0 But this Rush Limbaugh . . . a gross man, self-indulgent, full of himself and intolerant of others, a schoolyard bully and a gasbag, the kind of guy soldiers rough up when no one’s looking . . . is he worthy of you?\u00a0 I’m not trying to change your politics, just your choice of heros.\u00a0 Surely there are conservative leaders out there who are worthy of your love and admiration.<\/p>\n

Just because I can’t think of any doesn’t mean they don’t exist!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of my Missouri relatives are registered Republicans, but I have a Show Me niece who is more Republican than most: she’s an up-and-comer in the party who was selected to spend a summer working as an intern at the Ronald Reagan Library.\u00a0 Smart as hell, too, this niece.\u00a0 I adore and admire her, so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1716"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1723,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions\/1723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}