BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
If Rush were my Mother’s child, she would have washed his mouth out with soap, smacked his butt with a ping pong paddle and sat him in the corner for some quiet time with the Catholic missile to read.
But Rush is no child. He is a powerful voice in and for conservative America who influences both thinking and behavior.
Limbaugh, on Feb. 29th, called a female law school student, who testified at a faux hearing on Capitol Hill in support of insurance payments for contraception, the equivalent of a “slut” and a “prostitute”.
Limbaugh went way beyond the bounds of civility, maturity, simple human decency and most importantly, Christian behavior.
Limbaugh should be taken off the air and if he is not, people should quit listening to him and advertisers should quit bankrolling him (apparently seven have done so, thus far).
Limbaugh did issue an apology on his website, but it was lame and late. He said his choice of words “was not the best,” and he did not mean “a personal attack on Ms. (Sandra) Fluke.” Not enough. Not convincing. A real apology is an expression of sincere regret delivered face-to-face and proceeded by recompense. Instead he hid behind a webpage, filled with words that make it hard to take him at his word. I understand he has issued another apology, but that is for him, not her or the women he offended.
Limbaugh’s legion of radio-land fans will either agree that he should do some penance, the severity of which being an open question, or they will make excuses for his action in order to justify their continued loyalty to and enjoyment of him and his political theater.
It has already started. Among the key strategies in crisis management is turning attention to the critics, discrediting the source and portraying the incident as inconsequential. It’s the yeah, but… defense. Conn Carroll in the Washington Examiner and Jennifer Harper in the Washington Times are suggesting that the real villains are scheming Democrats, Emily’s List, MoveOn.org, and the National Organization of Women. They discredit the source. The aggrieved is not some innocent college student, but a seasoned 30-year-old feminist activist. They suggest that we should move on because there is no apparent political fallout.
That may be accurate, but it avoids truth. It doesn’t change what he did. He verbally assaulted a woman and all women who believe as she does.
There is no excuse or distraction that can justify it. For that alone, he should be canned. We have become such a polarized body politic that to those on the extremes, any behavior is tolerable if the end justifies the means.
But it was also the weapon he used in the assault—vulgar, crude and offensive language that served no useful linguistic, persuasive or political purpose. It was thoroughly without any “social redeeming value,” the judicial definition for judging pornography.
His words were symptomatic of a corrosive acid that is eating away at the very framework of our political process. It is the appalling lack of civility and common decency in political behavior and political speech. It has made our politics something from which people turn away. Good people won’t run for office and good citizens won’t participate. It has divided our society and made government dysfunctional. Those who argue that it’s just words or that a good fight makes politicians stronger have their head in the sand. Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York said it well, if not understated: Whatever we do and however strongly we feel we do it charitably; we do it civilly; we don’t judge the motives of other people. We just try-in a confident, peaceful inviting way-to make our position felt and to invite other people to respect it.”
Limbaugh’s third sin is that he abused the public airwaves, which are not his to abuse. The public has a right to protect the airwaves in their own behalf.
Those, particularly in the media, who think that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are all-inclusive, unbridled rights without responsibility, are wrong.
Someone once said the Constitution gives all Americans the absolute right to make damn fools of themselves, but that doesn’t mean they have to do it.
There is another corrosive element to all of this. The ever intensifying stampede in politics and the media to be more uncivil, more crass and more outrageous, either for fun and profit or for political advantage or media attention, is squeezing out public exposure to real issues and real debates. We’re spending so much time and attention on gossip, gotchas, political play calling and other intellectual garbage that serious questions about problems with long-term consequence are being ignored.
The result is that good people don’t even venture into the political arena anymore and voters either don’t vote or vote without the knowledge and information they need to make good decisions on their own behalf. That isn’t democracy in action; it’s democracy denied.
The contraception question is a good example. There seem to be three core issues at the heart of the controversy. One is a legitimate question of religious freedom and the 220-year-old battle over the meaning of separation of church and state. The second issue the role of the Federal Government in our daily lives and whether we want to move in the direction that President Obama has attempted to take us, or whether we want to pull back from government intervention. The third issue is that of women’s rights, which is made up of many threads woven through the complex fabric of constitutionalism, social and economic justice, political equality, and basic human dignity.
Are we as a society having an intelligent conversation about any of these profound and perplexing questions?
Of course not. We are preoccupied with Mrs. Romney’s Cadillacs.
You can’t take from Limbaugh what he contributed to the history of talk radio. But it is time to take stock of what he and others like him are contributing to our political process and our society. Limbaugh is just one of many trash talkers–liberals and conservatives—consuming our precious airwaves. I just read a story that said liberal bad-mouth Mike Malloy just last week mocked Christians in the southern tornado alley. “Their God…keeps smashing them into little grease spots on the pavement in Alabama…”, he allegedly said.
Free speech?
Don’t dignify it. We’re being had. We all deserve better.
Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.