When I first heard about Rush Limbaugh‘s comments regarding Sandra Fluke, I started to wonder how it was the radio host managed to come to the conclusion that his position on this was on any sort of solid footing. Don’t get me wrong: Limbaugh, as I noted, has a history of insulting comments but this was different. This was right up there with thinking it’s okay to start defending Hitler, start throwing around the “N”-word or publicly proclaiming your lust for animals. Something didn’t connect.
I went back to the quotes and the one thing that I noticed was a reference to where he saw the initial story about Miss Fluke. He mentioned a site I wasn’t familiar with called cnsnews.com. Their motto is, “The Right News. Right Now”, lest there be any confusion as to their perceptual take on the world.
One look at the site and you start to understand how Limbaugh painted himself into this corner. Reading the comments to virtually any story makes for some great reading—and some scary reading as well. The rhetoric is flat-out disgusting. Typical are comments about having to fumigate the White House when Obama leaves. His middle name is, of course, used to excess. Racism is rampant. Hypocrisy is not only prominent but seems lauded. The nuts are clearly running the asylum.
That got me thinking about the old story I’ve mentioned before about a famous case in New York City involving a guy by the name of Bernie Getz. Getz, in response to some kids who were intent on robbing him, shot several of them in a manner that clearly showed more than just self-defense being involved. hen asked why he bought a gun and felt so aggressive towards the kids he said that when you live in a rat hole you start to feel like a rat. That comment has been studied in great depth and has found many supporters. I believe it’s very much at the heart of the disconnect we’re seeing all across the country today.
We live in a country where you feel as if you can no longer trust anyone you don’t know well (and might best be wary of even those you think you know well). My point on this site is that if this is the type of place that a noted, supposedly bright pundit, gets his news perhaps it bears taking a look around. If you see this group as a peer group is it any wonder your arguments are going to devolve into biased rhetoric of the worst kind? Limbaugh, emboldened by those who frequent this sort of site, felt perfectly at ease with the language he chose because it’s all par for the course in these parts.
I decided to check in on the site for a bit and the experience has been eye-opening. The degree of hypocrisy has been simply amazing. Today there’s a top headline saying, “British Government: Christians Have No Right To Wear Visible Cross Or Crucifix“. Of course that isn’t the entire story and that’s even pointed out in the story on the site. What’s being discussed is that Britain is arguing that employers have the right to ban employees from wearing crosses and such at work because it’s not a requirement of the Christian faith. Do you see where I’m going with this already?
The Limbaugh story, and their support of it, is arguing that employers should have the right to not have to pay for birth control when they find it morally objectionable. Yet here we have a story arguing nearly the exact opposite. Employers should not have the ability to prohibit their own employees from wearing visible crosses at work (even where uniforms are concerned). I have little doubt that this same site would have no problem running a story about how employers should be able to prohibit an employee from having a copy of the Quran on their desk or wearing a turban.
We’re continuing to surround ourselves only with like-minded thinkers. People are now afraid to post anything to blogs, forums or anywhere (like here) for fear that they’ll be judged and lose out on a job. This is not good for us in the long run in any way. The melting pot does not work when all the ingredients are segregated and then we have the best comment of all on this from the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand.“
