4/17/5

Rush to Judgment

I don't think the FCC should slap stations carrying Rush's daily diatribe with crushing fines for his recent silly tirade peppered with a slang term for oral sex. In an effort to discredit Al Gore's youth-oriented TV network, Rush made a tired, irrelevant reference to the sex act Monica Lewinsky performed on Bill Clinton. Repeating the vulgarity multiple times, Rush tried to establish a connection between the Lewinsky-Clinton affair and the current level of teen sex so that by tenuous extension, he could claim Al Gore lacked the moral rectitude to reach the eyes and ears of young Americans. At least I think that's what Rush's message was, except that while there was a lot of bluster and vulgarity, there was not much persuasive logic in what Rush was yelling (same as usual).

Exclusive of the language Rush used, his argument is utter hogwash, because any reasonable person realizes the prime mover for teenage sex is raging hormones. Rush's real failing is not that he used a schoolyard term for fellatio, but that if logic were a snow shovel, he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with it.

To the small degree the Lewinsky-Clinton affair may have advertised fellatio to teenagers, don't you think the constant trumpeting of the event by the vengeful Right had a greater effect at the time than the actual, privately performed act itself? The Right Wing shouted about this sexual act from the rooftops for a year, showing less than zero concern for whether the news would reach little ears. For that matter, wasn't the sonorous voice of Rush Limbaugh audible above all the rest? As I said to an ultra-conservative acquaintance at the time, "It's not the Liberals' fault your kids found out whether a gentleman should offer a lady a tipparillo, it's your side's!"

As a Liberal, I don't think Rush's bj-gate is anymore distressing than Janet Jackson's nipple-gate, and I think they're both a tempest in a teapot. Doesn't anybody remember what VP Cheney said in front of God and everybody on the floor of the Senate, and wasn't that a much more egregious instance of public vulgarity? Rush's daily poisoning of the airwaves with his special brand of pernicious hate-mongering is far more offensive than his foolish use of a schoolboy's wordy-tird, but even his daily obscenity must be tolerated in order to uphold the principle of free speech.

I have to admit, however, I am savoring the predicament the Thought Police and their henchmen, the FCC, find themselves in now. While their base, the Fundamentally Precious, will not be writing letters to complain about their beloved Rush Limbaugh's transgression, I'll bet Howard Stern's fans are busy!