Rush to Judgment

In today's Washington Post, Slate's William Saletan writes an entertaining and sobering indictment of Rush Limbaugh, whose recent accusations of Michael J. Fox served as yet another reminder to us of how deeply disturbed this guy is. Here's an exerpt:

In Limbaugh's world, "there never was a surplus" under President Bill Clinton. AIDS "hasn't made that jump to the heterosexual community," and cutting food stamps is fine because recipients "aren't using them." Two years ago, he said the minimum wage was $6 or $7 an hour. Last year, he said gas was $1.29 a gallon.

Limbaugh has particular trouble distinguishing reality from entertainment. The abuse at Abu Ghraib "looks just like anything you'd see Madonna or Britney Spears do on stage," he told his listeners. Last month, he defended ABC's Sept. 11 movie against the document on which it purportedly relied: "The 9/11 commission report, for example, says, well, some of these things didn't happen the way they were portrayed in the movie. How do they know that?"

Last year, Limbaugh, who used a tailbone defect to get out of the Vietnam War draft, accused a Democratic candidate of having served in Iraq "to pad the resume." He charged veterans -- including former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.), who lost his legs and an arm in Vietnam -- with trying "to hide their liberalism behind a military uniform . . . pretending to be something that they are not." When war is just a television show, a uniform is just a costume. Liberalism is real; losing your limbs is a pretense.

Which brings us back to stem cells. Limbaugh says Fox's ads dangle a prospect of imminent cures "that is not reality." He's right. But the ads convey another reality: a man dying of a disease that might be cured more quickly if the government dropped its restrictions on research funding. Limbaugh dismisses this as a "script" being followed by Fox's "PR people" and "the entertainment media." Script? Entertainment? This is life and death.

If he didn't average 13.5 million listeners every week, he would be a joke. The fact that he does makes him dangerous in that he'll simply continue his campaign of character assassination and misinformation. By continuing to demonize those he disagrees with, he'll further divide his listeners from people of tolerance, and further drive them from reality. By continuing to spout unsubstantiated and often completely fabricated information as justification for his politics, he'll just add further to the growing number of duped Americans who would rather turn to others for direction rather than conduct their own independent thinking.