Plain talk: Limbaugh should be ashamed, but isn't

Capital Times (Madison WI) ^ | 10/27/2006 | Dave Zweifel

[UB355]

Plain talk: Limbaugh should be ashamed, but isn't

By Dave Zweifel October 27, 2006 Rush Limbaugh may not be this country's most disgusting human being, but he surely ranks among the top 10.

You're undoubtedly familiar with his latest outrageousness - claiming that Michael J. Fox was really faking those Parkinson's disease palsied shakes when he cut campaign ads for candidates who, like Wisconsin's Jim Doyle, favor embryonic stem cell research.

Fox, who came down with Parkinson's about 15 years ago and was forced to essentially retire from his acting career, thus became the latest victim of the well-honed Republican attack machine made famous by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential election.

Limbaugh, with his audience of like-minded flame-throwers, is a key player in the well-organized cabal that uses innuendo and, more times than not, outright lies to savage anyone who dares to disagree with the right-wingers who long ago took the Republican Party hostage.

You have to hand it to them - they're very clever.

Although few of them ever served in the military themselves, they've been able to turn war heroes into cowards. Just ask Democrat Max Cleland or even Republican John McCain - one lost his legs and an arm because of an enemy grenade, the other was a prisoner of war for more than five years - who were targeted by a well-organized campaign that started with Karl Rove in the White House and was spread by Limbaugh and his right-wing imitators on talk radio.

And, of course, there was John Kerry, a decorated and wounded Vietnam War veteran, who was made out to be a wimp by a propaganda machine whose favorite candidate hadn't even shown up for National Guard drills.

This year they've characterized an Illinois congressional candidate, Tammy Duckworth, an Army pilot who lost both legs in Iraq, as a "cut and runner."

So Michael J. Fox is only the latest to be the target of the cruel attacks that have nothing to do with the issues, but everything to do with planting seeds of doubt and fueling the whispering campaigns.

Limbaugh, of course, always tries to leave himself a way out.

"If this was not an act," he said of the Fox ad, "then I apologize." All of which is nothing more than a joke, of course, since to raise the issue at all accomplishes the mission.

The pity of it all is that all too many Americans fall for these tactics of character assassination. It will never end until the people stand up and say "enough."

E-mail: dzweifel@madison.com

[Fudd Fan]

Rush Limbaugh Dave Zweifel may not be this country's most disgusting human being pundit, but he surely ranks among the top 10.

Fixed it.

[TaMoDee]

I wish Brandi was my friend!!

[Marylander]

Dave Zweifel, Madison WI, a Rush listener ... NOT.

[RacerX1128]

1. Madison is a bastion of lib spewing hatred.
2. Fox did this performance for a specific political party, for a specific politician to specifically slam her Republican opponent. He, therefore opened himself up to criticism from the party and the person he was attempting to slam. So, f' Fox.
3. If Fox had been making this diatribe for the Pakinson's organization, then it would not have been on Rush's radar screen.

[popdonnelly]

Perhaps the Democrats should stop exploiting disabled people. After all, putting a disabled or ill person front and center is not an argument. It's an appeal to pathos.

[ancientart]

You're probably right. He's nothing like the evil image the lefties say he is. I'll bet they are tuning in this week.

[danmar]

Hey, Zweifel, or should I call you "Doubt" (English for "zweifel") since I really doubt you are running on all eight cylinders, by writing this dribble!

[Rocko]

I'm sure you meant to post a picture of Arnold.

[Brian Allen]

<< Why post such shit? >>

Well said.

Why indeed.

I guess it's probably because every noon, around about the time the Korsokoff's Syndrome-suffering Dave Zweifel crawls out of his own body waste and is sat out on the porch until the nurses' aid comes by and hoses him down, the DNC calls him up and asks him what to feel today.

The inimitable Ms Coulter has surely got those low-life bastards pegged!

[Right Wing Assault]

It will never end until the people stand up and say "enough."

Okay, okay! Michael Fox, ENOUGH!

[Jorge]

Rush has more listeners daily than the liberal media has readers.

And they HATE HIM for that.

There is probably more jealousy of Rush in the lib media than there is of anyone anywhere else on the planet.

[RightOnline]

Yawn.................................next............

[gb63]

Hardly know where to start...
audience of like-minded flame-throwers
Must never listen to Rush., who loves to put on libs...they make him look good.

well-organized cabal
what organization - - you mean like the left?

John Kerry, a decorated and wounded Vietnam War veteran
give me a break - what wound is that?

[sport]

Why?

[sport]

I agree.

[unspun]

Mr. Zweifel,

Rush Limbaugh was right. Today, Fox admitted he was overmedicated and those gesticulations aren't how he generally behaves.

But Limbaugh was right about something much more important. Fox's whole presentation was utterly dishonest and just about the candidates he slanders. Fox exploits the hopes of dying Americans that there are cures readily available, from a technique that has yielded tumors, but utterly no cures. And this diverts attention and funds from research that is actually producing results. Meanwhile, the life clock ticks away for multitudes.

Further, Fox manipulates Missourians to create a constitutional right to turn human beings into a commodity to be cloned in genetic factories -- by an utterly lying Amendment 2.

And by your characterizations, you are only contributing to this "big lie" tactic of a severity formerly known only to Soviet and Nazi regimes.

Please get your facts straight and gain some basic human morality, or perhaps you'd like to find a nation that wasn't founded on our unalienable rights.

Have some compassion, for disease sufferers and for our smallest living human beings that no one can prove are not persons.

And have some compassion for the taxpaying voter, who is only looking for someone to tell him the truth and not confiscate his money to create human clone factories.

Regards,
Arlen Williams
West Baraboo, WI

PS: Governor Doyle is lying hideously about this.

[sport]

Anytime you confront a Democrat liar with the truth and facts you are attacking them.

This is according to the Democrats and some on this forum.

[Niteranger68]

"So Michael J. Fox is only the latest to be the target of the cruel attacks that have nothing to do with the issues, but everything to do with planting seeds of doubt and fueling the whispering campaigns."

Let me guess. Dave wears a helmet with a little flag on top.

[Jorge]

Why post such shit?

So people like me can write to the editor of the paper and express how much we love and support Rush.... and tell them just what we think of their small minded little attack piece.

[supremedoctrine]

Well, here it is:the high or low watermark for all such "pieces" of this sort: he got EVERY fact wrong! Every fact!