Wednesday, February 05, 2020

Limbaugh and the Medal of Freedom

Let me state at the outset that there has been some hyperbolic language about Rush  Limbaugh on the left.  I'm willing to grant that Limbaugh is not the worst person ever.

But, what he is is a polemicist and a party hack.  He's spent his whole career exploiting and exacerbating the divisions in American society.  He's consistently peddled the narrative that Americans on one half of the political divide are on the side of good, and Americans on the other half of the political divide are bad.  And he's consistently manipulated or distorted the facts in order to serve this narrative.

Via Wikipedia:
The July–August 1994 issue of Extra!, a publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), alleges 50 different inaccuracies and distortions in Limbaugh's commentary.[171][172] Comedian Al Franken, who later became a Senator, wrote a satirical book (Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations) in which he accused Limbaugh of distorting facts to serve his own political biases.[173]Of Limbaugh's controversial statements and allegations they have investigated, Politifact has rated 84% as ranging from "Mostly False" to "Pants-On-Fire" (a signification for extremely false), with 5% of Limbaugh's contested statements rising to the level of "Mostly True" and 0% rated "True".[6] These debunked allegations by Limbaugh include suggestions that the existence of gorillas disproves the theory of evolution, that Ted Kennedy sent a letter to Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov seeking to undercut President Reagan, that a recent lack of hurricanes disproves climate change, and that President Obama wanted to mandate circumcision.[174][175][176][177]Limbaugh has been criticized for inaccuracies by the Environmental Defense Fund. A defense fund report authored by Princeton University endowed geoscience professor Michael Oppenheimer and professor of biology David Wilcove lists 14 significant scientific facts that, the authors allege, Limbaugh misrepresented in his book The Way Things Ought to Be.[178] The authors conclude that "Rush Limbaugh ... allows his political bias to distort the truth about a whole range of important scientific issues."

In other words, he does not deserve the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an award which is designed to:
recognize those people who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors".[2]

...unless, of course, we've entered some strange new reality in which our government is now unable to distinguish between what is serving the national interests of the United States and what is serving the interests of the Republican party.
Which apparently we have.

I know in the past 4 years there have been so many new lows that nothing seems to shock us anymore.  I read the news of Donald Trump giving Rush Limbaugh the medal of Freedom, and I thought, "Oh, of course, that's just the kind of thing Donald Trump would do."
But it's still worth being shocked and outraged about this. Every new time our institutions are corrupted, we should be outraged.

Healthy functioning republican governments do not claim that someone who is serving the partisan political agenda of one party is providing a great service to the nation.  This is yet another sign that our republic is changing into something else.

Bonus video:
Limbaugh Calls 12 Year Old Chelsea Clinton a Dog

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