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Last Updated: Nov 19th, 2009 - 11:45:36 |
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| notmytribe.com |
In all the recent controversies over Rush Limbaugh's overture to purchase the St. Louis Rams, his "I-hope-he-fails" trashing of President Obama, and his litany of racist remarks against African-Americans, there remains this one obvious but odious reality: It is not only OK but lauded and profitable for Limbaugh to be a high-profile racist in American society.
As much as he and his ilk have entertained themselves with foolish characterizations of President Obama as Hitler, it is precisely the sort of character such as Limbaugh (or his companions Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and maybe Lou Dobbs) who more closely resemble an emergent Adolf Hitler--in right-wing fanaticism and nationalism, charismatic and populist oratory, racist targeting of a national minority and, most recently, encouraging the type of political incivility and even violence characteristic of the years that marked the rise of Germany's Nazi Party.
Limbaugh's most recent racist rant has not actually occurred during the current Rams debacle (when it has been noted that he once described the NFL as resembling "the Crips and the Bloods" street gangs). It actually occurred recently during a tirade against Obama's drive for health care reform. "It's the beginning of reparations," Limbaugh huffed and puffed into the mike, referring to reparations for African-Americans for the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
The quote didn't get much attention--I happened to catch a replay of it on "The Colbert Report." But the startling comment was like a smoking gun, the missing link for those of us who never listen to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or Lou Dobbs but could read in between the lines of the tea-baggers, the town hall protesters, the good old boy opposition in Congress the harried voice of White nationalism. Somehow, we didn't know how, the message was being conveyed to Whites that health care reform will primarily benefit Black people at the expense of Whites. Limbaugh's stunning statement matched the best of Orwellian good-is-bad, bad-is-good propaganda that the Republican Party has used since the 1968 to create a divide between Blacks and Whites and, more importantly, to get working and middle class Whites to vote against their own interests.
Also, as a journalist watching the metamorphosis of the media, with newspapers disappearing, it has been fascinating and disturbing to witness the ascendancy of so many right-wing commentators on radio and TV who have made racist speak the norm and support the same speak by others. Glenn Beck, praised by Limbaugh, went farther with the health care-as-reparations argument on July 23: "Barack Obama is setting up universal healthcare, universal college, green jobs as stealth reparations," Beck said. "That way the victim status is maintained. And he also brings back back-door reparations."
Limbaugh also praises Sarah Palin who reportedly said on learning of Obama's victory in the Democratic primaries: "So Sambo beat the bitch!" Of course conservative columnist Kathleen Parker recognized Palin's appeal to Southern Whites who, Parker said, "heard the dog whistle" in Palin's vocal and derisive campaign against a Black man.
The racist insults go on and on, from so-called mainstream media like Fox News, which give them the veneer of respectability and acceptance. Meanwhile, Black voices are disparaged, silenced or represented by those who do not vigorously challenge the racist order.
The Limbaughs, Becks and O’Reillys of the world entertain their audiences (and are beginning to even organize them into demonstrations/mobs) with a sometimes almost surreal manner of speaking and logic, just like Hitler did in his rise to power. Limbaugh is carried on 600 radio stations, including many markets where there is no competing voice that is even centrist leaning. Glenn Beck’s ratings have only gone up after he called President Obama a racist. There is controversy over the popularity or ratings of Limbaugh's show but he is reported to earn $33 million a year and be worth $400 million. That is how he can explore purchasing an NFL team--and that is how he is being rewarded greatly for spewing hate.
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