May 11, 2004 by s.z.

Man, It Must Suck to Be Him In the transcripts of yesterday's show, Rush Limbaugh whines about how the press is singling him out for criticism, just because he likened the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse to a fraternity initiation, and said the guards were just letting off steam and having a good time.  And he blames all the attention, finger pointing, and "shame-shame"-ing on David Brock's site (not mentioning it by name of course, for fear his listeners would check it out): Now, isn't it interesting, folks. I've been around here for 15 and a half years; I've never been so often quoted on a single story. I think what happens is that the media has come across a new website that supposedly is chronicling what I say, and they all go there and they read it and they see it, and then they take the propaganda of that website and repackage it and call it news. And they leave the context of my remarks out. Yeah, the context is very important -- because there might be a time when it would be perfectly fine to say about rape, beatings, sexual sadism, and murder, "I'm talking about people having a good time. These people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of needing to blow some steam off?" Then, in a segment called Most Americans Aren't So Outraged, Rush imagines an America where he's just saying what everybody else is thinking, and is unfairly being persecuted for it.  He goes on to whimper that he's just the unpopular fat kid who tried to find success by pandering to the lowest common denominator, and now everybody's picking on him: I'm just a kid from Missouri that wanted to be on the radio. And now all of a sudden I have to be discredited along with the administration. Rush claims that the fact that people are objecting to his hateful remarks proves that they are only pretending to be upset about the whole prisoner abuse scandal, because Rush doesn't "have the power to do anything," and has never even met any of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (their loss, I'm sure).  Um, Rush, we all know you're just a big jerk with a large radio audience, but your remarks are still objectional. Rush further claims that the Democrats and the media are just trying to discredit Rush because they think that he is saying what President Bush (and Laura) really think about of the abuse (that it's not that bad). [T]hey are using me to say what Bush can't say so I have to be discredited because that's a way of discrediting what Bush really wants to say but can't say. That's what it is, and make no mistake about it. Delusions of grandeur -- another sign of opiate abuse.  And while Bush may or may not share Rush's feelings about the abuse of prisoners, the bottom line is that for a week now Rush has tried to excuse it and minimize this abuse -- and so he deserves all the discrediting that the media can summon up.  And then Rush "cuts to the chase": per him, nobody thinks this abuse is a big deal, and if they're saying they are, they're just trying to keep others from judging them. We all know that what's in these pictures we've seen -- and we haven't seen pictures of death -- even this latest picture of the dog and the nude Iraqi, have you seen that one? A couple of Americans are holding it looks like a German shepherd, some kind of vicious big dog, dogs are barking, bow-wow (barking sounds), the Iraqi prisoner is cowering there in fear, he's all nude, and the picture captions "dogs attack Iraqi". No, the dog isn't attacking anybody, the dog is on a leash. The dog is scaring an Iraqi prisoner. (Gasping.) No! We're scaring them, too. Is that allowed in the Geneva Convention? We're scaring them with dogs. Yes, my friends, we are. The dog didn't attack anybody, dog's not the attacking anybody, dog is on a leash, both of them are. I've seen the picture. Yes, my friends, if we haven't seen any pictures of "death" (even though they have been described, and even though we know that two deaths have been classified as murders by the Pentagon), then these deaths didn't happen -- and if the dog isn't attacking anybody in this one photo, then nobody got attacked.  But sadly for Rush, there have been reports of the subsequent dog photo -- and so we get what passes for a retraction in RushLand, and the caption under the dog photo now reads: Slight transcript modification: Apparently in a later picture the Iraqi prisoner is no longer cowering in the corner against his cell.  He's writing on the floor in a pool of blood, after the dog did bite his leg, but there's no picture of that. But that doesn't change Rush's belief that because he doesn't really care what happens to other people, nobody else does either.   He goes on to ask his listeners how many of them have pretended to be outraged over the photos, just to avoid social approbation: How many of you went out to social occasions over the weekend, and this subject, this story came up? And how many of you wanted to really say, "I don't see the big deal here. This is war. These are people that tried to kill Americans." But you didn't say it or some variation of that because you were afraid that you were the bunch of people would start yelling at you for being insensitive or coarse or crude or whatever. So you said what you thought you had to say in order to get along during the controversial situation that this conversation came up wherever you were.  Interestingly enough, the same USA Today poll that shows President Bush with only a 46% approval rating also reports that that 54% of those surveyed said "the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers" bothered them "a great deal."  25% said it bothered them "a fair amount."  Only 20% seem to be Rush's kind of people, whom the abuse bothers "not much" or "not at all." Of course, in a segment in which Rush tells his listeners that Bush is still widely beloved, Rush explains his theory of polling: Can I tell you? If a poll were taken and people felt really free to be truthful with a pollster, and they weren't worried about what somebody would think of what they say, I will bet you that the majority of the American people think this is so overblown and so exaggerated and so much being made out of so relatively little, given what is at stake here, that if we could get a truthful poll on this it would devastate the Democrats.    Yes, in RushWorld, everybody is basically a sociopath who has no empathy for others, believes that crimes only exist if they are caught on film, and would love to be able to express his approval of torture if only he didn't feel that others would judge him for it.  How scary would that be?  You'd need drugs to manage to live with yourself without gagging. 5:39:15 AM

The WSJ's Best of the Web Explains What "No Spin Zone" Means: O'Reilly of course is not a news reporter but an opinionated talk show host. He is pushing a point of view, but he is no more a "pseudo-journalist" than is Michael Kinsley, the L.A. Times' new opinion editor. He is simply working in an area of journalism in which objectivity is not expected. I wonder if Bill will challenge Taranto to a duel for blowing his "fair and balanced" cover while trying to defend him and his ilk from the mean, old LA Times. 4:27:48 AM

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?" A USA Today polls shows Bush Approval Rating Hits Lowest Point: For an incumbent to be at 46% job approval at this point in an election year has historically always spelled defeat" for presidents since 1950, says Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll. But he says it's a small sample; only eight presidents have sought re-election, five successfully. Fortunately for Bush, Washing the Blog has formed a non-partisan group to: (a)  tell the truth about his war record; and (b) attack John Kerry.  Yes, it's Draft Dodgers for the Truth It has been well documented that the Viet Cong never made it past the Mississippi River.  But HAD the Viet Cong made it past the Mississippi, Bush would have been there to defend the Western United States.  THE RISK WAS SIMPLY TOO GREAT to consider him a draft dodger.  He should have been in Canada growing mushrooms, or burning his bra in Washington. Like Glenn would say, "Quite." And "Read the whole thing." 4:20:35 AM