It was a busy day, but I want to at least start this post about Rush Limbaugh, who died today of lung cancer, before it ended.

Three kind of people said negative things about Limbaugh: liberals/progressives who hated him for removing the Left’s monopoly of journalism, punditry and public debate; his targets, which were the political correctness mob, identity interest groups, and statists; and people who never listened to him and didn’t know what they were talking about. Rush Limbaugh was a transformation figure in broadcasting, politics and culture over many decades, and he should be recognized and honored as such. Yet do you know how I found out he had died? I saw this Boston Glove headline on an Associated Press breaking story:

“Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio host who employed vicious but influential rhetoric, dies“

Absolutely despicable. Limbaugh’s rhetoric was seldom “vicious,” though those who never listened to his show would usually talk about how nasty he was. To the contrary, he was usually the opposite; funny, light-hearted, witty, and almost always engaging and civil to callers when they took issue with him. He did not mince words, that is true, but his targets had long been protected by a general fear of calling them what they were. The AP story is typical of what the mainstream media will write about Rush, focusing on the various controversies he stirred up, some when his rhetoric was unduly harsh, as when he called Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who argued that the government should pay for birth control, a “slut.” But that was the worst of Rush, and considering how long he spoke extemporaneously about hot-button topics for three hours five days a week, it is amazing that he didn’t have more misadventures. He apologized for the worst of them, particularly a period in which he mocked AIDS victims, saying later, “It’s the single most regretful thing I’ve ever done, because it ended up making fun of people who were dying long, painful and excruciating deaths, when they were not the target. It was a totally irresponsible thing to do.”

I speak for a living, also extemporaneously and fearlessly, and it is dangerous. Anyone in the field knows that it is inevitable that words will leave your mouth that you wish you could take back, and I grant a lot of understanding and “there but the grace of God go I” sentiments to a speaker, DJ,Talking head or frequent interview guest who has a bad moment. For the most part, Rush Limbaugh didn’t require any slack. He was superbly prepared, clear, articulate, and entertaining, while having the kind of voice and delivery that few could match in the history of radio.

He succeeded because he was talented and worked hard, and especially because he had guts. These factors, and good timing, allowed his show to change so much for the better that it is futile to try to cover his impact in a brief post. Limbaugh gave conservatives a voice and a sense that they could make a difference, while inspiring others to follow his lead. He weakened the Left by exposing its hypocrisy. He helped reveal how many conservatives there were in America, and almost certainly was a catalyst for Fox News to emerge as a desperately needed alternative to the mainstream journalism echo chamber. For this, he was hated; before Donald Trump, no national personality was the target of such venom. For his critics on the Left, those champions of insisting that mocking personal characteristics was a hallmark of bigotry, calling him fat was their favorite mode of attack.

Continue reading →

I have been wrestling with myself all day, fighting off the little voice in my head over whether to post this nauseating essay on Facebook. I think it needs to be read, and I haven’t seen what I believe are equivalent explanations of the importance of the dastardly conduct it describes. But I’m sure the post would provoke impassioned and offensive defenses by The Deranged, and that I might well lose it and tell some of theme exactly what they have become. I scrupulously avoided stirring the snakes’ nest after the acquittal, even restraining myself from posting the single word “Good!” without comment. Yesterday I made the mistake of starting to read my Facebook feed for the first time in weeks, and a lawyer I know had written ruefully that there were only “57 votes for democracy” in the Senate. As Jack Point says in “Yeomen of the Guard,” I can’t let that pass, and noted that the statement was Orwellian, and I was being kind. Voting for the contrived conviction of a man no longer President, over which the Senate has no jurisdiction, based on an impeachment based on no evidence, no hearings, no investigation, no witnesses and no defense, after a trial in which a party, in order to prevent future voters from having the opportunity to elect an opposition leader who dares to oppose its assault on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, employed false and falsified claims while refusing to allow witnesses and continued to use a corrupted news media to misinform the public while doings so, when a conviction will complete the process of defeating the Founder’s design for an impeachment process based on the public interest rather than a power grab by any party having a majority in Congress, is a vote FOR democracy! This is how much the past year has corrupted the minds, ethics, civics, integrity, honesty and language of progressives and Democrats.

1. Maybe someone was un-woke enough to read the Constitution? In Oregon, which has now lapped California in the “which state has become more insane?” competition, the 27-member COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Committee that is charged with devising “a vaccine sequencing plan focused on health equity to ensure the needs of systemically affected populations, including communities of color, tribal communities and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, are met,” seemed poised to announce a vaccine access priority based on race. That would be unconstitutional, and any well-educated 15 year old should be able to explain why; nonetheless, Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who is NOT 15, went ahead and did explain why prioritizing race in vaccination decisions would breach the Equal Protection Clause, writing that such a plan “runs into the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which says citizens of all races are entitled to the equal protection of the laws.The Supreme Court has long interpreted this to mean that the government may ordinarily not dole out valuable benefits, or impose harms, based on a citizen’s race.”

The commission’s decision was due more than a week ago, and crickets. No news is good news; such an anti-American bit of bias would naturally entail accusing anyone opposing it as being a white supremacist.

2. “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos” The planned Democratic PRO act is an assault on employment liberty that would devastate, among others, actors and theater artists. The voice in my head that is cheering for its passage to stick it good and hard to all my professional theater friends who happily and ignorantly put Joe Biden in office is undoubtedly evil, but the little guy sure is seductive. But I’m sure Sean Penn approves of it after careful analysis.

The PRO Act was just re-introduced with sponsors including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer. Among many other things, the bill would severely restrict the legal definition of independent contractors, substantially ending the gig economy as we know it.  The Foundation for Economic Education explains, PRO would use the reclassification of independent contractors to force gig economy companies to hire workers as full employees and thus provide them the accompanying salaries and benefits. All but a tiny percentage of professional theaters can afford to operate like that. FEE writes,

The PRO Act would outlaw millions of existing jobs with the stroke of the president’s pen. After all, it would make illegal any independent contractor arrangement where the worker provides services within “the usual course of the business of the employer,” meaning jobs like Uber drivers, Doordash drivers, Instacart grocery deliverers, and more could not exist as we know them. There are roughly 10.6 million independent contractors in the US, accounting for 6.9 percent of all employment. Some of these workers might not be affected by the law and some others may get hired on as full-time as a result. But there’s little doubt that millions more would find themselves unemployed…Uber is just one company and one example. But freelance workers such as journalists, photographers, florists, musicians and more all lost work in California under legislation similar to the PRO Act. 

Continue reading →