Reply #12: Friday (part 2) [View All]

As I said in an earlier post, Rush is generally on during my work hours, but today I got to leave work 30 minutes early so I could deliver needed medical supplies to the housebound and infirm, as our usual delivery guy had to take emergency leave due a family crisis. So, this allowed me to tune in to Rush, though continuity was lacking as I had to get in and out of the car from time to time to deliver medicine.

I think the first caller said she’d never paid any attention to news or politics until 9/11, but then became a news junkie, though she was upset that if Rumsfeld or Bush gave a speech, there were talking heads afterwards at CNN who distorted their message. She said she loved talk radio and finally got FoxNews even though her cable channel wasn’t providing it at the time due to probable bias. It struck me that the themes from this morning's show seemed to carry on into the afternoon shows. One can but admire such thematic discipline on the right. Conservative media functions like a well-oiled machine. Liberals, in contrast, are like disoriented ants who are all tugging and pulling at the same stale potato chip, but in opposite directions.

In contrast to the underunderwrited FoxNews, Rush’s show sure has a lot of commercials, which means it’s very successful, like American Idol, which also appears on Fox. So even though I gave him 30 minutes, there wasn’t a whole lot of actual airtime for Rush to affect my self-esteem. The second caller I heard was upset that his teachers expected him to believe that “he came from a cosmic hiccup”. That started Rush in on evolutionary theory, and I must admit that I had never had it explained to me in quite this way before. Rush says that evolution CAN’T explain creation, which is true. To say that would be just as idiotic as claiming that germ theory explains why dogs chase cats, instead of the other way round, and it really makes me mad that teachers are telling students that evolution explains how the universe came to be.

But he wasn’t done. Rush went on to say that there is NO WAY he evolved from a Chimpanzee or Baboon, since if he HAD, then why are there still Chimpanzees and Baboons---hmmm??? Explain THAT!.

I have to admit that after listening to Rush’s cosmological theories and dissection of the theory of evolution, I agree with him completely that there is NO WAY he evolved, from a Chimpanzee OR Baboon.

Eats, shoots and leaves.

The final caller to his show was the icing on the cupcake, or, as Johnny Depp’s personal chef might say L’piece de resistance. This guy said “These liberals always want to save the air and the water, but they make the steel mills close so hard-working Americans lose their jobs. What have liberals ever done to protect America?”

It may surprise some of you to hear that Rush wasn’t able to think of a single example. Liberals—useless AND annoying AND responsible for high gas prices (or at least happy about them) and rust belt unemployment!

Rush finished by telling his listeners (bear in mind he’d not been there on Monday) that he’d been working AWFULLY hard and needed another vacation, so would be back Wednesday. Speaking of being cool like the French, I’m beginning to think these Right Wing Radio guys are way into the Parisian 35-hour work week. One can but hope that his replacement on Monday and Tuesday will be Crummy, too.

I was pretty happy when Sean Hannity finally came on, since I’ve come to feel a certain affection for Sean Hannity over the course of this week. Try as I might, I can't dislike him. Sean has some very attractive qualities about him, not the least of which is that he brings a tremendous amount of positive energy to the airwaves, like a talk show version of an Irish Setter. One can practically hear his tail wagging and his whole body wiggling, such is his eagerness to share with us his fabulous guest lineup and his daily insights.

Sean is on record as opposing the Kerry flip-flops, and I have to say that I wouldn’t care to see Kerry schlepping around in flip-flops very much, either, as any man with a face that long and that much hair on top of his head must have feet that should never been shown in public, lest they scare the horses. But the main thing about Sean Hannity is that he is offended by the injection of politics and partisanship into the political discourse. He finds it particularly offensive that liberals and Democrats are sniping at Bush and his policies, given that currently all three branches of govt. are controlled by the Republicans.

I thought about this. It would be more seemly for John Kerry and the Democrats to simply roll over on their backs, bare their necks, and expose their soft, white underbellies to the victorious Republicans, than to express views critical of the ruling party in a blatant attempt to seize the reins of power back for themselves. This made me think of an even BETTER campaign theme for John Kerry. “Kerry in 2004—because someone has to run against Bush, or else the rest of the world will think we’re a dictatorship.”

So, I’ve come to the end of my journey of self-discovery, via tuning in to RWTR as my time allowed. What have I learned and how have I changed? Well, I don’t like Bush any more and I’m not at all convinced that the folks currently in power deserve to be there. But I think less of John Kerry. I found a surprising affection for Sean Hannity, who reminds me of a big, drooling, overenthusiastic dog with muddy paws who you just can’t bear to scold. I’ve learned that liberals like me are race-baiting, death-wishing, gas-price-whining, flip-flopping, do-nothing, useless, sanctimonious, hypocrites who aren’t actually evil, just misguided. I’ve learned that astrophysicists and evolutionary biologists are “Pointy-headed”. I’ve learned that Rush Limbaugh in NO WAY admits to having evolved, though he thinks his show has, since they have more stations now. I’ve learned that the most intelligent woman on the planet is Sean Hannity’s call-screener. I’ve learned that it is a very bad, wrong, and flip-flopping thing to change your mind about anything EVER unless you are Zell Miller, and then it’s ok.

But the single most important thing I’ve learned this week is that it is WAY more fun to be the opposition than the folks in charge, and so that’s why I’m writing in Tony Blair come November, as that way I get to have it both ways, and no matter who complains, I get the inimitable pleasure of whinging about how bad a job they are doing, which is even more pleasurable than having your vagus nerve stimulated or seeing the price of gas rise yet again and knowing this is going to help the environment and make us cooler like the French.

Besides, if I’m going to get screwed by a politician, I’d rather be screwed by one with a British accent who can give a proper speech.