Tuesday, December 9, 2008

The Economy Is Just Fine?

Yesterday I wrote a piece that was conciliatory toward the Right, but if you read this blog routinely, you knew that would never last. My question for today is this. If your ideology helped lead the nation to totally needless war and national bankruptcy, and then the vast majority of the American people turned against your position, how do you keep going in the Right direction? I guess that depends on who you are.

If you’re Ann Coulter you probably make the decision to put a nude picture of yourself on the cover of your next book. Even liberals will go along with that. If you’re Charles Krauthammer you hope that people will give you a break because you’re in a wheelchair, and maybe they’ll even think that you’re as smart as Stephen Hawking. If you’re Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly you don’t need to worry about the future of your career because you’re on FOX, and FOX is to journalism what Mae West was to romance and sexual intimacy. And finally, if you’re Rush Limbaugh you just keep doing the same old thing because your fans expect nothing different.

According to Rush Limbaugh, the economy is just fine, and all the hype about doom and gloom is just scare tactics coming from the “liberal elite media.” This exactly matches his analysis on global warming which he believes is also a liberal myth. It’s easy for Limbaugh to come to this conclusion since— for him— the economy really IS just fine. Earlier this year, he signed a contract for 400 million dollars to stay on the radio a while longer. That’s more than the combined pay for the CEOs of GM, Ford, and Chrysler, and their institutions actually make a tangible product. For you “dittoheads” out there, bullshit is only metaphorical and can’t be considered a tangible product.

The demographic profile for Rush listeners includes a great many people who fall into the categories that are being hit hard by layoffs and foreclosures. I wonder how these people feel when they tune into the EIB network and hear their oracle tell them that the economy is just fine.

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