April 10, 2004 by s.z.

Defamation  You may have read the recent Salon article Dr. Dittohead, Margot Mifflin's serio-comic story about how she learned that her highly-esteemed therapist listens to Rush Limbaugh's radio program.  It concludes: The next week we picked up where we'd left off two weeks earlier. Rush faded into history but continued to haunt me.  . . .Professionally, she counseled against virtually all of Rush's rhetorical techniques: name-calling, "provocative" language, finger pointing and mudslinging -- diversions, she would say, from the project of self-realization. Privately, she got something from Rush. I would never know what it was -- but by now it hardly seemed worth pondering, if it hadn't affected my therapy. Week after week, my shrink impressed me with her insights. She may have been a hate radio subscriber, but in the cloister of her own office, she didn't judge. She met me on my own terms, which required precisely the kind of tolerance Rush rejects. And she taught me lessons that changed my life. I only wish she could do the same for Rush. Well, if you didn't read it, maybe you read the outraged howls about it at The Corner ("Nice, smart people listen to Rush Limbaugh?! A Salon Writer is flabbergasted and angry") or Sullivan's The Daily Dish ("Snooty Liberal Self-Parody Alert").  But the most outraged of all was, predictable, Rush ("Bigot Journalism Teacher Maligns Dittohead Therapist").  Now, this piece is filled with every error, every mistaken assumption the left has made about this program from get go, and what's amazing, if this woman teaches journalism, this woman is so uninformed and so hysterical, so biased, so clichéd, so filled with stereotypes -- and she's teaching journalists. It's beyond me. Well, it really isn't beyond me. I know where it comes from. "How do you know?" [Program Observer Interruption] Well, you never mind. I'm not going to discuss my... What kind of mind does it take as a journalism instructor to unquestioningly believe all of that? To just accept...? I mean, that stuff is rooted in so much error. It's so incorrect. [snip] I find this amazing. All these things in here are right out of the FAIR Report. All these things she believes are right out of that stupid report from eight or ten years ago that the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting people put together, and every one of them is out of context or totally incorrect. It's just amazing the elitism, the arrogance, and the condescension. Well, it's true that Rush really didn't call "'13-year-old Chelsea Clinton the White House dog [sic]," he just said (on his late TV show), "Did you know there is a White House dog?" and then showed Chelsea's photo.  As far as telling a black caller years ago to ''take the bone out of his nose and call back later,' [sic]" " and claiming that "'all composite illustrations of criminals look like Jesse Jackson' [sic]," I defer to Snopes: [A] helpful reader provided us with a copy of that Newsday article (from the 8 October 1990 edition), and that article does report Rush Limbaugh as admitting he felt guilty for once having told a difficult-to-understand black caller to "take that bone out of your nose and call me back." (This incident occurred not on Rush Limbaugh's now-familiar talk and political commentary radio program, but at the beginning of his broadcast career back in the early 1970s when he was hosting a Top 40 music show under the name "Jeff Christie" on either WIXZ or KQV in Pittsburgh.) The same article also quotes Limbaugh as confirming that he did utter another line commonly mentioned in tandem with the "bone" quote: "Have you ever noticed how all newspaper composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?" Since Rush Limbaugh presumably wouldn't have expressed feelings of guilt over an apocryphal story, and as far as we know he hasn't ever denied or disclaimed what Newsday reported he told them, we have to put this one in the "true" column. I'm going to assume that the rest of the "out of context or totally incorrect" information from the FAIR report which Mifflin passed to her therapist are along these same lines (basically true).  Now back to Rush: By the way, there's much more in that Salon.com piece I didn't finish. I mean, it's four or five pages. This Margot Mifflin babe. It would be an interesting experiment. I would like to talk to her just to see, just to listen, to see what this person looks like and listen to her actually say this stuff to me. It's beyond me. Yeah, that Mifflin babe is a real piece of work -- she's probably one of those feminazis!   You should bash her qualifications to teach journalism some more -- maybe you and the Dittoheads can get her fired!  But Rush, honey, the Salon piece is only two pages long.  You might want to be more careful about things like that in a bit where you're denigrating somebody for failing to "fact check." But it seems that the lies about himself aren't what Rush is REALLY upset about: And I finally figured out what it was that really bothered me about this. It wasn't that I care that this woman, Margot Mifflin, understand where she is wrong. After sitting in this for a while and really getting in touch with my own feelings -- a little therapist lingo here -- I want to meet the therapist. I feel sorry for the therapist. This therapist has been denigrated -- unnamed, naturally -- here but this therapist has been raked over the coals, has been impugned, has been professionally criticized by a patient who's a bigot, who is a closed-minded, arrogant snob, who teaches journalism. It all figures. Mifflin says only very flattering things about the therapist in her Salon piece.  The only thing which could be considered "denigrating" is the fact that she listens to Rush's program.  But it's kind of odd that Rush himself considers that fact to be defamation of character.  I wonder if he would advise the therapist to sue. 6:20:47 PM

Always Good For a Chuckle Roger Ailes has found the best NRO Corner post for the day: the one about how an American President came back from the dead in order to not investigate intelligence failures until after the war was over. We look forward to Bush doing the same thing, and await the day in 3535 when he appears (as a zombie, a robot, or a head in a jar) to convene a Commission to find out who (the FBI, CIA, Clinton, or all of the above) was really responsible for any dropping of the ball in regards to the event that precipitated the just-ended Islamfacists/Freedom Lovers War. 12:00:55 PM

Randall Terry's Shameful Secret: His Son This (My prodigal son, the homosexual) is sad.  It's the response of Randall Terry, the head of "Operation Rescue" (the "march on abortion centers/denounce the homosexuals" group) to his adopted son's story in Outmagazine.  It's sad because it sounds Jamiel had a chaotic and abusive childhood, then was placed by Social Services with Terry and his then-wife when Jamiel was eight (and adopted by them when he was fourteen).  While nobody knows what his life would have been like if he had been placed with another family, it seems to me that the rigid, intolerant Terry family wasn't the best place for this young man, who apparently discovered he was gay while in his teens, but kept it a secret from his adoptive father until recently.   Per Terry, it was in his teens when Jamiel started to go astray:  My son's teen years became a mixed stream of happy times mingled with half-truths, dishonesty and a double life. His behavior grew worse and worse in college, culminating with the story in Out magazine. Well, undoubtedly Jamiel's life in his home of origin did some psychological damage, but I also have to think that being a gay young man in the Terry houseshold contributed immensely to his problems. Terry, of course, blames Jamiel's homosexuality on the experiences he had before he came to the Terrys as a foster child: Many homosexuals want to ignore the causal links to their sexual addiction; they want us to believe their homosexuality is genetic, not behavioral. They're "made this way." Well, those in the know say that all sexual addictions (like all addictions, period) have both a genetic "predisposition" and an enviromental "trigger."  However, no sensible person views a sexual orientation as a "sexual addiction."  Being raised in a family where homosexuality is spoken of so negatively undoubtedly contributed to whatever problems Jamiel has now.  The fact that Terry blames it all on Jamiel's prior cirumstances and willful rebellion is another thing that's sad (in that Terry says he has two young sons at home, and they are presumably being raised with the same kind of intolerance and hate that Jamiel was). Anyway, Jamiel sold his story to Out Magazine.  While this would have certainly hurt any father, Terry has responded not with private grief, but by telling the world that Jamiel has had a DWI arrest, has been taken to court for bouncing checks, is an unemployed dead beat, etc.  This does not sound like Christian love to me.  Terry, who has a new wife and those new kids now, has told Jamiel that he's no longer welcome in Terry's house.  Terry claims that it's not because Jamiel is gay, "but because he could sell us out again.  At any point, he could come for a holiday, make mental notes and find another buyer for another story."  Yeah, that's just what Christ said about the lost sheep. Terry concludes with: Let all who read the Out story, or any other that spins off of it, know that the story about my son is laced with fraud and deceit from beginning to end. And please pray for my son's redemption, and pray for our family's healing. Well, I will say a prayer for Jamiel's redemption, but I don't think it's the redemption that Terry wants for him (which is "Love in Action," which, per Terry, "offers sound clinical, in-patient therapy to those who want freedom – and they have a great success rate with homosexuals").  It sounds like Jamiel is a troubled young man, and I do hope that he finds his way to a productive, happy life.  And it also sounds like Randall Terry is a troubled old man, and is not in a position to tell anyone else how to live his or her life. 11:26:27 AM