I've stayed away from Rush Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" comment for a while, for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, although Limbaugh can claim a huge audience by talk radio standards, that doesn't mean he's got a lot of listeners. Saying you have a big audience by talk radio standards is like saying you have a huge fan base by polka band standards -- it means your small group is somewhat larger than other small groups. It doesn't really mean squat and it's no guarantee that a lot of people hear what the bloated drug addict says. Rush is a big fish in a small pond.Second is that I'd already dealt with it -- before Limbaugh even said it. When the GOP freaked out over MoveOn.org's "Betray us" ad, I totally called this. By introducing a resolution to condemn MoveOn.org, the right opened the door to it. "What would happen if the GOP were required to condemn every damned bit stupid-assed, simpleminded, and offensive spew that came from their side of the aisle?" I asked. "What if every time that Coulter -- or Pat Robertson, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, Glen Freakin' Beck, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, ad nauseum -- opened their mouths, every member of the GOP were required to issue a statement condemning them? There'd be several such statements issued daily."
So, now we've got a Congress more interested in gotcha politics and defending people's reputations than they are in defending the damned First Amendment. You may not have noticed, but the bloated drug addict has the right to be a prick. The remedy for hate speech isn't to have the government step in and throw their weight around, the remedy for hate speech is more speech. In other words, people get to be pricks and other people get to call them pricks for it. That's the way this whole free speech thing works.
As always, this tempest in a teapot distracts from the real issue. Just as the freakout-fest over the "Betray us" ad distracted from what Petraeus actually said and what total BS it all was, Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" comment distracts from a real issue he himself brought up -- what the people fighting in Iraq think about that war they're fighting.
Turns out -- big surprise -- the bloated drug addict's all wrong. When he said, "The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for their country," he was dead wrong. And that's not a matter of opinion, that's documented fact...
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