--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > He loves America - while hating all kinds of > Americans who don't happen to be > exactly like him. Rush Limbaugh succeeds by lying to > the public, by pandering > to their prejudices and to their completely > misplaced resentments and grudges > and envies and greeds. Instead of inspiring them to > be better people, he > tells them it's just fine to be selfish, greedy, > stupid, ignorant shits.
Guatam replied:
How arrogant. Basically your argument is that Limbaugh is popular because he tricks the stupid average Americans who listen to him, who are too dumb and foolish to see through him - unlike the great and wise Tom, who does. Just like David, you make my case better than I ever could.
Guatam, have you ever actually *listened* to Rush Limbaugh? He regularly states "facts" that are boldfaced lies or misleading generalizations. Here are a few examples from
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/limbaugh-debates-reality.html#sec1.1
or
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X24916D75
LIMBAUGH: "Banks take the risks in issuing student loans and they are entitled to the profits." (Radio show, quoted in FRQ, Summer/93)
REALITY: Banks take no risks in issuing student loans, which are federally insured.
LIMBAUGH: "Don't let the liberals deceive you into believing that a decade of sustained growth without inflation in America [in the '80s] resulted in a bigger gap between the haves and the have-nots. Figures compiled by the Congressional Budget Office dispel that myth." (Ought to Be, p. 70)
REALITY: CBO figures do nothing of the sort. Its numbers for after-tax incomes show that in 1980, the richest fifth of our country had eight times the income of the poorest fifth. By 1989, the ratio was more than 20 to one.
LIMBAUGH: Comparing the 1950s with the present: "And I might point out that poverty and economic disparities between the lower and upper classes were greater during the former period." (Told You So, p. 84)
REALITY: Income inequality, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, fell from the 1940s to the late 1960s, and then began rising. Inequality surpassed the 1950 level in 1982 and rose steadily to all-time highs in 1992. (Census Bureau's "Money Income of Households, Families and Persons in the United States")
LIMBAUGH: "Oh, how they relished blaming Reagan administration policies, including the mythical reductions in HUD's budget for public housing, for creating all of the homeless! Budget cuts? There were no budget cuts! The budget figures show that actual construction of public housing increased during the Reagan years." (Ought to Be, p. 242-243)
REALITY: In 1980, 20,900 low-income public housing units were under construction; in 1988, 9,700, a decline of 54 percent ;Statistical Abstracts of the U.S).In terms of 1993 dollars, the HUD budget for the construction of new public housing was slashed from $6.3 billion in 1980 to $683 million in 1988. "We're getting out of the housing business. Period," a Reagan HUD official declared in 1985.
LIMBAUGH: "The poorest people in America are better off than the mainstream families of Europe." (Radio show, quoted in FRQ, Spring/93)
REALITY: Huh? The average cash income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans is $5,226; the average cash income of four major European nations--Germany, France, United Kingdom and Italy--is $19,708.
LIMBAUGH: "There's no such thing as an implied contract." (Radio show, quoted in FRQ, Spring/93)
REALITY: Every first year law student knows there is.
[snip]
LIMBAUGH: "It has not been proven that nicotine is addictive, the same with cigarettes causing emphysema [and other diseases]." (Radio show, 4/29/94)
REALITY: Nicotine's addictiveness has been reported in medical literature since the turn of the century. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop's 1988 report on nicotine addiction left no doubts on the subject; "Today the scientific base linking smoking to a number of chronic diseases is overwhelming, with a total of 50,000 studies from dozens of countries," states Encyclopedia Britannica's 1987 "Medical and Health Annual."
LIMBAUGH: "We closed down a whole town--Times Beach, Mo.--over the threat of dioxin. We now know there was no reason to do that. Dioxin at those levels isn't harmful." (Ought to Be, p. 163)
REALITY: "The hypothesis that low exposures [to dioxin] are entirely safe for humans is distinctly less tenable now than before," editorialized the New England Journal of Medicine after publishing a study (1/24/91) on cancer mortality and dioxin. In 1993, after Limbaugh's book was written, a study of residents in Seveso, Italy had increased cancer rates after being exposed to dioxin, The EPA's director of environmental toxicology said this study removed one of the last remaining doubts about dioxin's deadly effects (AP, 8/29/93).
LIMBAUGH: "The worst of all of this is the lie that condoms really protect against AIDS. The condom failure rate can be as high as 20 percent. Would you get on a plane -- or put your children on a plane -- if one of five passengers would be killed on the flight? Well, the statistic holds for condoms, folks." (Ought to Be, p. 135)
REALITY: A one in five AIDS risk for condom users? Not true, according to Dr. Joseph Kelaghan, who evaluates contraceptives for the National Institutes of Health. "There is substantive evidence that condoms prevent transmission if used consistently and properly," he said. He pointed to a nearly two-year study of couples in which one partner was HIV-positive. Among the 123 couples who used condoms regularly, there wasn't a single new infection (AP, 8/29/93).
LIMBAUGH: "Most Canadian physicians who are themselves in need of surgery, for example, scurry across the border to get it done right: the American way. They have found, through experience, that state medical care is too expensive, too slow and inefficient, and, most important, it doesn't provide adequate care for most people." (Told You So, p. 153)
REALITY: "Mr. Limbaugh's claim simply isn't true," says Dr. Hugh Scully, chair of the Canadian Medical Association's Council on Healing and Finance. "The vast majority of Canadians, including physicians, receive their care here in Canada. Those few Canadians who receive health care in the U.S. most often do because they have winter homes in the States--like Arizona and Florida--and have emergent health problems there." Medical care in Canada is hardly "too expensive"; it's provided free and covered by taxes.
LIMBAUGH: "If you have any doubts about the status of American health care, just compare it with that in other industrialized nations." (Told You So, p. 153)
REALITY: The United States ranks 19th in life expectancy and 20th in infant mortality among 23 industrialized nations, according to the CIA's 1993 World Fact Book. The U.S. also has the lowest health care satisfaction rate (11 percent) of the 10 largest industrialized nations (Health Affairs, vol. 9, no. 2).
In the 1950s, Adlai Stevenson, when told that "every thinking person was voting for him" replied that unfortunately, he needed a majority. It is, of course, impossible to imagine Eisenhower (or Reagan) saying such a thing. First there's the arrogance of thinking that a non-entity like Stevenson was somehow more intelligent than the man who led Torch and Overlord and wrote _Crusade in Europe_. Second, the automatic condescension that most Americans don't think. Apparently nothing has changed since then.
The point is not that "most Americans don't think." The point is that most Americans don't take the time to research the statements of people they respect, so when the people who are respected lie (as shown above) the people can easily be misled.
Above, you wrote:
How arrogant. Basically your argument is that Limbaugh is popular because he tricks the stupid average Americans who listen to him, who are too dumb and foolish to see through him
The truth is that Limbaugh is popular because he lies to people who don't take the time to look up the facts.
Reggie Bautista
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