Gwen Shlam's Blog: Rush's compassionate conservatism

The US fiscal position is so poor, someone's going to have to make sacrifices. Rush Limbaugh and friends volunteer ?�others

As America's economic woes continue, the increasingly loud calls for shared sacrifice fall on deaf ears in conservative circles.

Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh addresses the (alleged) need for shared sacrifice (listen to clip and read transcript) with a frustrated caller who says he is tired of hearing on TV and on radio shows like Limbaugh's about how cuts need to be made and how we all have to sacrifice, yet there is no sign of any kind of sacrifice from the people making these claims. The caller says he remembers "just a couple months ago, when we couldn't have increased taxes on the most wealthy, the people that have made more money over the last decade, over the last 40 years, really, while wages have, you know, kind of remained flat", and pushes Limbaugh to explain what kind of sacrifices he personally is making.

To Limbaugh's credit, he actually allows the caller to pose this incendiary question without shouting him down or hanging up on him, but the generosity of spirit doesn't extend much further than that.

I am not a proponent of shared sacrifice. I don't believe in sacrifice, period. I think that's an absolutely defensive, stupid, self-defeating way to go about life. This whole sacrifice business is a Democrat trick. It's nothing more than a political spin game: we must have joint sacrifice. That means we must accept, we must universally accept bad times, must just accept them, and then all share equally in them. Sorry, I don't participate in recessions.

Limbaugh is certainly fortunate in his non-participation in the recession, as he makes an estimated $28m a year, and continues to enjoy his Bush tax cut. But as the caller goes on to point out, there are things that Limbaugh and others like him (that is, other rich conservatives) want to keep paying for like "oil subsidies" and the "wonderful wars you love so much". So he wonders why the only people who seem to have to make sacrifices to pay for these things are those earning $50,000 a year, instead of those earning $25m a year. Limbaugh sets him straight on the issue.

There's a reason somebody makes $25m and there's a reason somebody makes $25,000, and it's not the guy who makes $25m's fault. There's a reason, and it's not your job to come along and say that somebody is at fault, and it's none of your business to come along and say it isn't right and that somebody has got to make it fair by giving something up. You are destined to fail in your own life if that's your attitude about success. That somebody's success is owing to somebody's misery, therefore the misery must be honoured? Wrongo, pal. Somebody in misery's gotta be shown how to get out of it, not have it shared equally.

A logical enough argument as they go. But it still doesn't explain why Limbaugh, who fought tooth and nail against giving up 3.5% of his salary in the form of rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, fully supports the push by Governor Walker in Wisconsin to have teachers and other public servants give up 8% of theirs. Or did I miss something?

Laura Ingraham

Laura Ingraham is disturbed by a claim put forth by liberal commentator Howard Fineman on MSNBC that the unions seem to be enjoying the support of the younger generation (listen to clip).

"Is he smoking the stuff they smoke in Madison? He's talking about Madison, Wisconsin as if it's, I don't know, ah, Jackson, Mississippi or something. 'Oh, we're surprised the college kids are really embracing unions.' Howard Fineman doesn't seem to get the fact that these kids are just into having a day off!"

Ingraham is referring, of course, to the outpouring of support by the college kids in Wisconsin for their teachers, but she isn't buying the argument that it has anything to do with a new awareness among the youth of the need for workers to have collective bargaining rights or any kind of a say in their economic wellbeing. And even if the alleged support is about something more than the students desire to "be doing anything except their applied physics class", Ingraham does not believe that what is happening in Wisconsin is evidence of any new social movement in America.

Madison, Wisconsin is a barometer for America?! This is like saying that Berkeley represents the United States or Santa Monica or Cambridge, Mass or the Upper West Side of Manhattan. This is a liberal fiefdom. It doesn't get any more liberal than Madison, Wisconsin. Howard, you lost me at giddy!

It might be a bit of a stretch to call Wisconsin a fiefdom of liberalism since the Republicans had a sweeping victory there last November, claiming not only the governor's office, but also both chambers of the state legislature. Some voters may be regretting that decision now, however, when they see how the GOP's slash-and-burn policies impact them.

Anyway, something about this subject led Ingraham to thinking about her domestic rodent problem (she has mice in her house), and she was amused by one caller's suggestion of using a multi-use trap, which would enable her to trap but not kill the mice.

I'm supposed to put this multi-use trap with fruit loops in it or whatever? They're then having a mouse party inside the container. All of them are in there scampering over, probably biting each other, then I'm supposed to pick that up as they're making their little claw sounds at the side of the container and then I'm supposed to release them across state lines or whatever?!

Still, she decided this was the more humane approach than using the more popular, sticky traps in which mice have been known to gnaw off their own legs.

I have an idea. Could you help me make a sticky trap we could put in Wisconsin so when the Democrats try to leave or flee the state or maybe Ohio, they get stuck; and the worst that can happen to them is they gnaw their own legs off. And maybe we can make a TV movie of the week out of it or something. The sticky trap: forget the mice, do it for the Democrats!

Evidently, her humane approach to rodents doesn't extend to certain humans.

Michael Savage

Michael Savage proposed less drastic measures to deal with the Democratic state legislators who have temporarily left their districts in an effort to prevent the GOP from forcing a vote on union-busting measures (listen to clip).

"I would encourage the governor of that state to do something else. If the Democrats who are not in session by tomorrow morning at 9am do not return, they're fired; and he's going to hold special elections in every one of their districts. That's it: you're fired. You have a job.
"These Dems are such swine in this country. From the top to the bottom, it's the swinish party. It's the party of swine. When they had absolute power, they were glad to show up for work, and now they're in the minority, they don't even want to vote."

As for the protesting workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere, on whose shoulder the burden of sacrifice for the nation's economic woes has been placed, Savage has little sympathy for their plight.

You know which side I'm on? I'm on the side or reason and fairness. The teachers have a moderate salary ? you know, $105,000 a year with benefits is a very moderate salary. I mean, you ask any teacher in Wisconsin ? they're starving to death.

I'm not sure where Savage got this salary estimate from, as he doesn't indicate any source, but according to the Teacher Portal website, the starting salary for a teacher in Wisconsin is $25,222, and averages at $46,390, after 10 or more years of service. Still, Savage seems to think the teachers in Wisconsin are lucky to have jobs at all and that they would be unemployable in the private sector.

And they could all do so much better in the private sector, you know that. That's the standard government worker line ? "we'll take less money because we could always go work in the private sector." I used to hear that from the university liars. There are no jobs in the private sector; they're unemployable. They ought to be glad they have a job. I told you what I think the government should do and I think he's [Governor Walker's] starting to do it.

He means, of course, firing them. And with that wearying thought, he asks his audience:

Can you believe the country you're living in?

Listening to this, I'd have to say, the answer is no.

Glenn Beck: an apology (his)

Glenn Beck, a proud non-apologist, issued an apology Thursday for ill-conceived comments he made on his radio programme earlier this week comparing reform Jewish rabbis to radical Islamists, and for suggesting that they [the rabbis] focused more on social justice than on religion. (Beck, a Christian, is an opponent of social justice, preferring instead "equal justice", which he believes is what Jesus Christ himself would have championed had he thought it through properly.)

During the offensive broadcast, Beck also claimed that reform Judaism, like radical Islam, was less about religion than about politics. Beck's remarks were inspired by the criticism he has received from members of the Jewish community for his ongoing attempts to link George Soros (a Hungarian Jew who survived Nazi occupation) to the defenders of the Third Reich, a claim he has made frequently on his TV show. But this is the first time that Beck has gone so far as to compare reform Jews (a community he purports to admire enormously) to radical Islamists (a community he abhors.)

Upon the advice of his producer (who allegedly told Beck he would like to keep his job), he issued a long and rambling apology, acknowledging that the comments were "ignorant" but could perhaps be put down to performance fatigue, as he is on the air live four hours per day.

Jewish leaders welcomed the apology but said it was "incomplete". So far, no apology has been issued to the Muslim community.