Rush Job
I'm not sure what the problem is here. What's the problem with Michael J. Fox using his illness for political ends when Rush Limbaugh has built his entire career on publicly displayng his own sickness?
In any case, it's a fair guess that Limbaugh's outburst has now made a Democratic senate win in Missouri much more likely. What a wonderful irony if a Democratic takeover of the Senate will be traced back to Limbaugh's tantrum.
October 25th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
There should be no problem, but we are talking about desparate Republicans and the slippery slope to abortion, right?
While Rush was being his usual jackass self. There has been a “rush” to cautherize the wound in the form of a counterattack commercial that will air during the middle of the World Series tonight with Patricia Heaton ( Everybody Loves Raymond and of Feminists for Life), Jeff Suppan (very apropos) Kurt Warner (superbowl hero) and Jim Caviezel (aka Mel’s Jesus). There will be many Missourian eyeballs watching that moment. The race is too close to call.
October 25th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
I’ve seen the oppo comercial and it’s one of the most amateurish things I’ve ever seen. The thing is barely coherent, it’s shot with all of the artistry of a passport photo and even the audio is godawful. If this is their best shot, they’re doomed. It’s so lame and weird, it won’t convince anybody who’s not already in their corner. I can guarantee you that Missouri eyeballs are going to be insulted by being treated to such a crappy campaign video. Literally the worst one I’ve ever seen.
Also, the notion that the way to respond to an individual with Parkinson’s disease on the stem cell issue is to round up some third tier celebrities rattling on with spurious soundbites about cloning and abortion is grotesque.
But I have to say, I love it when the GOPers whine about unfair ads, resort to rounding up a psuedo-celebrity posse and waste their ad buy – during the World Series no less – on something this cheesy. The guy who bookends the thing looks like he got his start performing on Youtube and hasn’t graduated.
Here’s the Youtube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nguJQ_dRPXw
October 25th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Sorry but the bleatings of people who seem to come out of a Monty Python movie (”Every Sperm is Sacred”) will hardly work for Jim Talent. The mouth breathers who believe this crap were going to vote for him anyway. And the Dems will vote for McCaskell. Its the independents who will be won over by Alex Keaton. EVERYONE has someone in their family who could be helped and the argument against using cells that would otherwise be thrown away and aren’t from abortions anyway will not cut it.
Tim Noah is being facetious. Rush already showed his ignorance in his “Cup of Coffee” stint on “Monday Night Football” when he made those bonehead comments about Donovan McNabb. He was gone in a week. There is a reason Keith Olberman stands out. In the Sports Talk business you have to know what you’re talking about. There are no such standards on right wing talk radio.
BTW notice that Limbaugh’s audience has shrunk to half of what it once was? 10 million is still a lot but he and O’Reilly (down a third), Hannity (getting his butt kicked by Ed Schultz) and, for that matter, FOX News (off 35%) all are proving that Lincoln was right. You can’t fool all the people all the time.
October 25th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Incidentally, what I’ve read in response to Limbaugh is that the involuntary movements that are apparent in the Michael Fox video are actually a result of his taking his dopamine meds. If he went off his meds, he’d be frozen and barely able to speak.
Limbaugh is a boil on the ass of humanity. But, in fairness, his excruciatingly painful behavior in public might be attributable to his being off his meds. Or not.
October 25th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Maybe Rush Limbaugh is upset that when Michael J Fox played Alex on Family Ties, he supposedly lost his virginity with someone who shared Alex’s passion for Milton Friedman. That was just acting, huh? How dare someone fuck for Friedman and come out endorsing Democrats!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Ties
October 25th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Reg one news organization went to the head of the Parkinson’s Clinic at U MD Med School and got that info. If Fox didn’t use it he would be very stiff and unable to talk. The shakes are the side effects of the meds. And it is interesting that Oxycontin Man and Bill “Fallafel” O’Reilly now have set themselves up as medical experts. Just the other day O’Reilly told his audience that no woman ever lost her life from complications in pregnancy that would have required an abortion to save her. It didn’t take long for OB/GYNs to correct him.
Hey maybe we can get these two for practicing Medicine without a License!
October 25th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Hell, they’re no worse playing doctor via TV than Bill Frist…who DOES have a license.
October 25th, 2006 at 8:28 pm
Yeah, but as Al Franken has said that is the GOP health plan. There will be a TV Monitor in every hospital and Dr Frist will diagnose you!
October 25th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Holy shit…I just read that the reason the guy who opens that Anti-Fox ad up is Mel’s Jeezus SPEAKING THE FIRST LINE IN ARAMAIC. Brilliant…
These folks really know how to reach out beyond the cult.
October 25th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
I meant to say that “the reason that guy who opens up that anti-Fox ad doesn’t make any sense is because he’s Mel’s Jeezus speaking Aramaic etc. etc.”
Please don’t ask me why I’m writing in English and not making sense…
October 25th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
This fatass bigmouth nutjob is literally and figuratively a huge embrassment to conservatives, including all his trailor trash bible thumping nose picking wedgy wearing radio audience.
October 25th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
So, Mr R, how do really feel about Rush?
October 25th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
JIm R – you may not want to jettison your loose cannons ‘cuz it’s a civil war, dude. Somebody told me that.
October 25th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
This thing you hear from time to time; that Rush is an embarrasment, that he doesn’t really speak for conservatives, hmmm…. How do you square it with his wallpapered radio presence, and the fact that all major Republicans do his show? Wasn’t Rummy on the other morning? Glad he’s got the time.
What’s a little sickening is the lordly treatment he gets whenever he does Russart, who seems to find him so endless charming he gets extra soft ball questions.
October 25th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
Rush Limbaugh Takes on the Wheelchair Lobby…
This week Rush launched the first salvo in his valiant war against the sick and enfeebled, by attacking an ad that Michael J. Fox produced for Claire McCaskill….
October 25th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Cheesetastick!
Thanks reg for the You Tube link, I thought you were joking that Mel’s Jesus broke out with the Aramaic, but seeing is believing. While I agree with the senitments written, I always get a little nervous around election time because this is the heartland we’re talking about where production values rate way lower than family values.
But speaking of production values straight from the Atwater handbook is the Corker ad against Ford:
video.on.nytimes.com/ifr_main.jsp?nsid=b270dbb7b:10e82d03fd3:-3bf8&fr_story=f503c8d9dc514acfb9e79bc6726b5b7fece48071&st=1161838097516&mp=FLV&cpf=false&fvn=9&fr=031006_104425_w51bd0788×109e7460d63xw2703&rdm=367394.83027131984
Why didn’t they just give him a pimp hat? You can check out other campaign ads as well at the NYT.
The Dems need either TN or VA to make the switch as well to take the Senate and all three races are mighty close.
October 26th, 2006 at 7:25 am
It is bizaare that prominent progressives even bother dignifying the likes of him and his fellow middle aged blonde counterpart by directly commenting on them or their dyspeptic rantings. I prefer Tom Tomorrow’s reference to them as “The Scary Blonde Pundette” and “The Drug Addled Host”
http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=20975
As for the question, “Is he really that dumb?”, the answer is a resounding “yes.” It’s true that he and his ilk have brains enough to have much scorn for his own audience, which they certainly do. However, American pop culture has always celebrated the least brightest and least talented. I cannot even think of a radio media outlet here in the heartland of America, for example, that does not bore me with its banality. I love visiting Canada because I can catch up on the actual news.
As was stated by a previous poster, oxy-moron’s medical opinion snorts in relation to Fox won’t change the view of the voting demographic whom Democratic operatives most covet. The losers who make up oxy-moron’s base of listeners are irrelevant in this election. It is a case of preaching to the converted.
I will admit that it is interesting to note Fox’s dignified and graceful response to this flunkie, but I don’t believe that oxy-moron was worth even mentioning in the first place, since he and his crowd are non-entities.
October 26th, 2006 at 8:31 am
“I thought you were joking that Mel’s
Jesus broke out with the Aramaic, but
seeing is believing.”
Dogwhistle politics at its finest.
I didn’t even notice it.
October 26th, 2006 at 8:33 am
By the way, I inserted some newlines
in my post (and this one) for readability.
Any chance you could learn to use
tinyurl.com, RcerX?
October 26th, 2006 at 9:38 am
Re. David’s comment, Michael Fox’s response to Limbaugh
was incredibly dignified. He simply stated that he realized
that people who didn’t live with it would have a hard time
understanding the disease. What a contrast to the ugliness
of Limbaugh’s soul on display…
October 26th, 2006 at 10:24 am
So its in Aramaic? Way to reach beyond the base. Reminds me of the story of the Boston Brahim who was studying Hebrew so that when he died he could talk to God in his own language!
October 26th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
“Any chance you could learn to use
tinyurl.com, RcerX?”
I would prefer it if you used html tags. As a security conscious geek I like to know just where I’m being sent on the interwebs.
October 26th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Again, forget the Coulters and Limbaughs and consider how they made legitimate by the feeble challenges to what they say, or by not challenge them at all.
See Media Matters for Matt Lauer explaining on the today show how Fox got what he deserved, how Limbuagh “just said what a lot of people were thinking.”
October 28th, 2006 at 4:11 am
Michael Fox would have done stem cell research alot more good by promoting its promises, rather than using it to potentially defeat a political candidate, in the last days of an election btw.
He opened himself up and threw himself into the ring of politics by doing his promoting this way. As I understand it, he specifically supported Cardin over Steele in the Maryland Senate race.
As the true statement goes, all is fair in war love, and politics. Rush’s typical stupid and insensitive response actually helped Michael.
The question for the audience: does sympathic figures who insert themselves into this nasty arena, albeit very sincerely, ought to expect there will be insensitive and unkindly political pushback? Or do they they deserve a pass?
October 28th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
If by “pass” you mean freedom from counter-criticism, no I wouldn’t expect that. If on the other hand you define a “pass” as immunity from having your disease and your advocacy of finding a cure ridiculed and joked about, then I do think that we all as humans deserve a “pass” from that…even though I am not suggesting censorship. It’s called human decency.
Here is an example of human decency: I attended a speech at a church by Gracia Burnham. She was the one who, along with her husband, were kidnapped along with about a dozen other missionaries in the Phillipines by radical Islamists a number of years ago (She ended up eventually being freed, but her husband was murdered). I didn’t know what I was in for, but it basically turned out to be a celebration of the extreme right wing.
In her case, as well as the case of Terry Schiavo, would it have been appropriate to go on the airwaves and make fun of them and their tragedies? Would it have been decent to have sccused them of “faking it” to make political hay?
The difference, Jim, is that if a left wing media personality had done any of these Limbaugh-esque things, they would have been denounced by the right establishment and banned from the airwaves, Dixie Chicks-style.
However, if you are any one of the cornucopia of right wing hot air bags on the air, you are given a free pass. That’s one of the differences between us and them.
The other difference? It’s called decency and respect. Something the right doesn’t quite have a handle on.
October 28th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
By the way, it is only appropriate that Fox has supported Cardin, for the same reason that Fox supported Republican Senator Arlen Spector in 2004: Cardin supports and always has supported embryonic stem cell research. The smear against Cardin supposedly suggesting that he didn’t support stem cell research is a typical right wing lie. Even Michael Steele his Republican opponent has never repeated this internet, oxy-moron originated lie.
October 28th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Speaking of the Dixie Chicks: the liberal media conspiracy has struck again.
CBC: “Wurtzel said his company has a policy not to accept commercials on issues of public controversy, such as the Iraq war or abortion.”
October 31st, 2006 at 6:28 pm
Richard is homeless, living in his car, dying of diabetis and heart failure (but still eating boxes of nonuts and chocolates in swoop), just had cataract operations, is causing the taxpayer a fortune. He has not worked in over 20 years and expects the government to take care of him; thus, all his diatribe against republicans.
I already got him on SSI and have put him up in motels at a cost of $300 per week. He will not look for a room, but rather seeks out your column and porno sites. Marc, I met you a couple of times at the book fair at UCLA.
November 9th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
You all are a bunch of stupid, ignorant, mindless, lost sheep. I hope you liberals get the society you dream about. Let liberal men marry liberal men, let liberal women marry liberal women, let liberal pregnant women kill their liberal babies, let liberal atheist remove the Ten Commandments, Christianity, and all morals and values from our country and eventually you all will murder each other and eventually force yourselves into extinction. It’s inevitable and I can’t wait!!! You all will get what you ask for and deserve!!!
February 5th, 2008 at 10:48 am
paris hilton sex tape galore…
Recently leaked footage of the new Paris Hilton sex tape…