Nov 04 2007
The Rush Limbaugh Plan for Dealing with the San Diego Fires
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By Steven Jonas
11/4/07
Over the past couple of weeks, Rush Limbaugh has been holding forth on the San Diego fires. He has been particularly forthright on the difference between how they have been responded to compared to that of the Katrina Disaster. Rush Limbaugh is not, as Keith Olbermann likes to characterize him, a comedian. Rush Limbaugh is a serious political figure in the United States who just sometimes sounds like a comedian in that he seems to be doing self-parody, even when in his own mind, he is deadly serious.
For example, no joke, Limbaugh was one of the key outside figures brought into Washington by Newt Gingrich in December 1994 to run serious seminars (seriously, folks) for the incoming “Gingrich Class” of then newly elected Congressmen. He is, after all, an expert, one of the paramount practitioners in the use of the paramount Lee Atwater political tactic of “Always Attack, Never Defend.” He is a supreme slayer of messengers, another prize Atwater technique. The other most prominent current practitioners are the other two-thirds of O’RHannibaugh, BushCheney themselves, and Hannity’s candidate for President, Rudy Giuliani, perhaps the best practitioner of all. Giuliani is so good at it, so natural with it that one might think that it is embedded in his genes. So if your two most prominent political tactics are, as they were for Gingrich, always attacking and never defending and killing the messenger(s), who better to instruct his acolytes than Limbaugh.
Even with mastery of these two techniques, Limbaugh no longer has guests on his program. As he so proudly announced when he was being interviewed by Joe Scarborough a week or so ago on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” who needs to do interviews with “so-called experts” when he, Limbaugh, is the expert on everything. Limbaugh, to whom I spent a good deal of time listening in the early 90s when I had a weekly 1-hour local radio talk show, did occasionally have guests back then. But he was a terrible interviewer in terms of eliciting information from guests, and had a very hard time debating anybody any time factual knowledge was needed. Nevertheless, he is still a right-wing figure to be taken seriously. After all, when the original model right-wing political “think tank,” the Heritage Foundation, held a panel discussion on torture and the television program “24,” the panel was moderated by Limbaugh. Among the panel’s attendees were Tony Snow, Mary Cheney (yes indeed, the VP’s daughter, whose own daughter has two mommies, was there with the Prince of Homophobia Karl Rove), Lynne Cheney, and the show’s producer (Mayer. J., “Whatever it Takes,” The New Yorker, Feb. 19 & 26, 2007). Limbaugh is indeed no joke.
So when he announces the principles for the Limbaugh Plan for dealing with the San Diego fires, or at least what one can deduce would be the plan if he actually were to go ahead and announce one (which he would never do because he might actually be called upon to defend it), it is incumbent upon us to listen. The plan is based on what he describes as the “good old American values” of self-sufficiency, rugged individualism (you know, a la Herbert Hoover of Great Depression fame), and every man for himself, except when neighbors decide voluntarily to band together. (Yes, folks, he really said these things.) There should be no taxes to support any government services (other than war-fighting, especially to gain “victory” in Iraq, suppressing freedom of speech in the name of fighting flanking maneuvers (oops, there I go again, the word they use is “terrorism”), and locking up bad guys as Limbaugh would define them. For government in general is bad, don’t you know. The strong can take care of themselves and the weak are for the Democrats who just love their votes.
The difference between the response in San Diego versus that in New Orleans is clearly illustrated by the difference in the people of the two cities, according to Limbaugh. In New Orleans, “they” (and we all know who “they” are) are just weak and dependent. Why, why didn’t they just band together and go shore up the dikes that protected Ward 9 themselves? Why aren’t they out there now, when the Army Corps of Engineers is eight months behind schedule on dike repairs (USA Today, Oct. 29, 2007) fixing those dikes themselves? Because “they” are just weak and dependent, and going around begging for government handouts that the Democrat Party is only too happy to give them, that’s why. (If you think I am exaggerating, if you can stomach it, just listen to the man for a bit some day, and if you think you won’t be able to stomach it, take some Dramamine first.)
In San Diego, the people banded together to help one another out. The implication of what Limbaugh has been saying is, if they did more of that, who would need any fire departments (run by those nasty government agencies, don’t you know). Neighborhood associations of self-responsible individualists would be able to join together, get their own hoses, find their own water, fly their own aircraft and drop their own fire-suppressants, and just beat back those fires being spread by up-to-100 mile-an-hour Santa Ana winds by showing those fires just how individualists can beat Mother Nature at her own game. And for God’s (and he means it literally) sake, in the Limbaugh Plan, you would never let a firefighter near your home because that would just show how dependent on government you are (weakling!). Let the market solve the problem, and if you can’t stand the heat, just get out of the fire.
As for the causes of the fires, some say the National Forests and the accumulated brush in them are a major cause. And we know whose fault all that accumulated brush lying around is, don’t we. Why those TreeHuggerNazis, that’s who. They won’t let the lumber companies go in to do the cleanup because they are afraid they would just clear cut everything. And why not? After all, if all the trees were cut down, and there was just more desert out there, then the fires could never get started, now could they? As for any water shortages, if the Colorado River dries up, the individualists will just band together and dig their own wells. Who needs government?
Finally, as for the Democrat claim that the generalized drought in the West and South (if there really is such a thing, after all why should we believe those government weather services) is a result of global warming, that is a falsity. For so-called global warming is itself a falsity, a liberal plot, spread by that ultra-liberal (really a Commie, you know) Al Gore, or if it somehow is real, humans have nothing to do with it, or if they do, there is nothing they can do about it, or if they can, they must let the market solve the problem.
And that, my friends, is the Rush Limbaugh Plan for dealing with the San Diego fires. That is, it is the Plan if you just take what the man says on the radio three hours every day to its logical conclusion.
Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY), a weekly contributing author for The Political Junkies, and contributing editor for The Moving Planet Blog.
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