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“The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion.” ― John Lawton
You may have heard by now that Rush Limbaugh spent last Friday informing America that Presidente Obama was sending US troops to Uganda to kill all the Christians – and by “Christians” he meant the “Lord’s Liberation Army”.
You may also have heard that the LRA is actually a pretty vicious bunch, and that in any case Obama is only sending over military advisors who will play no combat role at all.
Result: Limbaugh’s rant was so far off-base that even Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) – the guy who thought Abu Ghraib was no big deal – had to step in and say on the Senate floor, “Dude, no, that’s wrong.”
Plenty of liberal bloggers are spinning this as evidence that Limbaugh (and therefore the Republican Party) supports kidnapping, torture and murder as long as it’s done in the name of Jesus, but I don’t buy that – not least because it seems that near the end of his show word filtered in on what the LRA is really about, and Limbaugh started to hedge a little.
What likely happened was that Rush saw a headline about Obama starting a war sending troops somewhere, saw the words “Lord’s Resistance Army” and thought, “That’s my hook,” and ran with it from there, because he knows what his listeners want to hear: proof that Obama is a Muslim who wants to kill Christians.
I figure that’s how it went down because that’s generally how Limbaugh works – he tries to sound knowledgeable about a subject he knows nothing about by making shit up as he goes that conforms to his own worldview.
I will say Limbaugh’s on-air reaction to the revelation that the LRA may not be nice people is both priceless and telling:
It’s that “Nevertheless …” that gets me. In this case, it’s shorthand for “Okay, I could be wrong, but that doesn’t change the overall point I’m trying to make that Obama hates Christians and wants to kill them.”
Also, the comment about due diligence is great, because traditionally broadcasters do that BEFORE they go on the air, not AFTER they’ve spent their slot spouting complete baloney.
Which is why I’m convinced he does this on purpose. I think Rush is perfectly happy to spout whatever bullshit he wants and play the “Hey, I had no idea” card when he gets tripped up, as though it’s better to come off as an uninformed and intellectually lazy ignoramus after yr done stating yr opinion than while yr actually stating it.
Not unexpectedly, he’s now trying to laugh it off – and also pass the blame to his studio cohorts for not knowing who the LRA is. So not only is he playing the “Hey I had no idea” card, he’s playing the “It’s not my responsibility to know what I’m talking about” card.
And why not? He gets paid millions of dollars to do this, and it’s not like his listeners care – they’re already onboard with Rush’s worldview and are generally not only proud that they don’t know any more than Rush does, but are smug about it.
Still, you can’t ask for a better illustration of 21st Century American Politics than that.
On the bright side, if the majority of Americans had no idea who the LRA are or what they’redoing, they know now.
Ignorance is never bliss,
This is dF
You may have heard by now that Rush Limbaugh spent last Friday informing America that Presidente Obama was sending US troops to Uganda to kill all the Christians – and by “Christians” he meant the “Lord’s Liberation Army”.
You may also have heard that the LRA is actually a pretty vicious bunch, and that in any case Obama is only sending over military advisors who will play no combat role at all.
Result: Limbaugh’s rant was so far off-base that even Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) – the guy who thought Abu Ghraib was no big deal – had to step in and say on the Senate floor, “Dude, no, that’s wrong.”
Plenty of liberal bloggers are spinning this as evidence that Limbaugh (and therefore the Republican Party) supports kidnapping, torture and murder as long as it’s done in the name of Jesus, but I don’t buy that – not least because it seems that near the end of his show word filtered in on what the LRA is really about, and Limbaugh started to hedge a little.
What likely happened was that Rush saw a headline about Obama starting a war sending troops somewhere, saw the words “Lord’s Resistance Army” and thought, “That’s my hook,” and ran with it from there, because he knows what his listeners want to hear: proof that Obama is a Muslim who wants to kill Christians.
I figure that’s how it went down because that’s generally how Limbaugh works – he tries to sound knowledgeable about a subject he knows nothing about by making shit up as he goes that conforms to his own worldview.
I will say Limbaugh’s on-air reaction to the revelation that the LRA may not be nice people is both priceless and telling:
Is that right? The Lord's Resistance Army is being accused of really bad stuff? Child kidnapping, torture, murder, that kind of stuff? Well, we just found out about this today. We're gonna do, of course, our due diligence research on it. But nevertheless …
It’s that “Nevertheless …” that gets me. In this case, it’s shorthand for “Okay, I could be wrong, but that doesn’t change the overall point I’m trying to make that Obama hates Christians and wants to kill them.”
Also, the comment about due diligence is great, because traditionally broadcasters do that BEFORE they go on the air, not AFTER they’ve spent their slot spouting complete baloney.
Which is why I’m convinced he does this on purpose. I think Rush is perfectly happy to spout whatever bullshit he wants and play the “Hey, I had no idea” card when he gets tripped up, as though it’s better to come off as an uninformed and intellectually lazy ignoramus after yr done stating yr opinion than while yr actually stating it.
Not unexpectedly, he’s now trying to laugh it off – and also pass the blame to his studio cohorts for not knowing who the LRA is. So not only is he playing the “Hey I had no idea” card, he’s playing the “It’s not my responsibility to know what I’m talking about” card.
And why not? He gets paid millions of dollars to do this, and it’s not like his listeners care – they’re already onboard with Rush’s worldview and are generally not only proud that they don’t know any more than Rush does, but are smug about it.
Still, you can’t ask for a better illustration of 21st Century American Politics than that.
On the bright side, if the majority of Americans had no idea who the LRA are or what they’redoing, they know now.
Ignorance is never bliss,
This is dF
