Tweaked Off

I can't believe I actually listed to Rush Limbaugh in college, not after he used the devastating Haiti earthquake to take a irrelevant political shot.

First, here's what Limbaugh said in response to a caller who asked why he should have to go through the White House's website link to donate to Haitian relief efforts:



Here's the transcript:

RUSH: We're going to start in Raleigh, North Carolina. Justin you're first today. Great to have you with us.

CALLER: Mega Rush Baby dittos. My question is, why did Obama in the sound bite you played earlier, when he's talking about if you wanted to donate some money, you can go to WhiteHouse.gov --

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: -- to direct you how to do so. If I want to donate money to the Red Cross, why do I need to go to the WhiteHouse.gov page and --

RUSH: Exactly. Would you trust that the money is going to go to Haiti?

CALLER: No.

RUSH: Would you trust that your name is going to end up on a mailing list for the Obama people to start asking you for campaign donations for him and other causes.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: Absolutely right.

CALLER: That's the point.

RUSH: Besides, we've already donated to Haiti. It's called the US income tax.

CALLER: Rush, my mother was going to be on a missionary trip. She was going to leave at 4:30 this morning to go to Haiti with our church.

RUSH: That's another point, too. Churches --

CALLER: No government money, Rush.

RUSH: Exactly right. Look, there are people that do charitable work every day in Haiti. It's not as though -- like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, it's our fault. Reverend Wright, it's our fault, there's no excuse for such poverty when there's a nation as rich as we are so close. There are people that have been trying to save Haiti just as we're trying to save Africa. You just can't keep throwing money at it because the dictatorships there just take it all. They don't spread it around, and even if they did they're not creating a permanent system where people can provide for themselves. It's a simple matter of self-reliance. Nobody takes that approach down there because this has always been a country run by dictators and incompetent ones at that.

I can understand not wanting to go through the White House website to donate to the Red Cross. I can understand not wanting to end up on somebody's political mailing list. But then Rush jumps from that concern to this statement: "We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the US income tax."

The point, I think, is that some of our government money goes to efforts counteracting poverty and corrupt regimes like those found in Haiti. And yes, throwing money at a problem doesn't always solve it. But the White House isn't asking us to donate to the government; it's asking us to donate to the Red Cross and other relief organizations like Tucson's own World Care. The U.S. government is providing logistical support plus search and rescue teams, but they already have our tax dollars. In that sense, Rush is right. But the context stinks.

Now is not the time to bag on Haiti's corruption or our response to it. Tens of thousands of innocent people with no political faults, real or accused, are trapped or dying or already dead. They should be our focus now, not Haiti's rotten past.

But then again, we know Rush loves to "tweak the media," and he openly admits it. As he told a caller:

All right. Now, this is funny. This was our Media Tweak of the Day yesterday, April. You know, what we do here on this program is, purposely, play the media like violin, like a Stradivarius. And I love tweaking them. I love irritating them, and I love upsetting them and all you do is take words uttered by liberals and apply them to current events.

The caller, by the way, was upset after reading a Huffington Post article implying Rush told people not to donate to Haitian relief efforts, something which Rush never said. But yet he expected the media to jump on that remark, which it did. Rush explains his methodology to the caller:



And here's the transcript.

It's not enough that Rush is playing both sides here: saying he loves to tweak the media with quotes he knows will be taken out of context and then getting upset when it happens and people respond to it. He goes on to namecall after a caller has trouble seeing things from his perspective...

RUSH: Now, April, I must ask a serious question: Do you ever listen to my program or do you hear about it in places like the Huffington Post?

CALLER: Um... I... When I'm upstairs in the bedroom I'll have the radio on and I like to listen to some local stations. So, yes, I have heard your show.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: And I've heard dozens and clips and quotes that you've said and most of the time I'm absolutely disgusted with you. I'll be perfectly honest with you.

RUSH: I see. Okay, now that we've established that you listen sometimes and you're absolutely disgusted. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever heard of the Democrat Party and President Obama politicizing a natural disaster?

CALLER: Have I ever heard of them politicizing...?

RUSH: Yeah, has that ever happened? Has Barack Obama and the Democrat Party ever politicized a natural disaster?

CALLER: Umm, well, this is the -- at least if you're speaking specifically about President Obama, this is the first natural disaster that we've had on, uh -- on his term. So...

RUSH: We had a natural disaster when he was Senator. It doesn't matter whether he was president or not. I said the Democrat Party and President Obama, as a Senator, certainly politicized Hurricane Katrina. You see, the difference, April, is that I know these people. I know who they are and I love to tweak them. I love to tweak the media. I predicted yesterday... How come there's no outrage, by the way, at Bill Clinton suggesting that Obama's nothing more than a slave when he was trying to get Ted Kennedy to endorse Hillary and he says (doing impression), "Come on! Come on, Ted. You know, a few years ago this guy would be fetching us our coffee." You're not outraged about that because the Huffington Post isn't outraged about it. They probably don't write about it but I talk about all of it.

CALLER: Actually... Uh, are you implying that the Huffington Post as the one and only resource that I watch (sic--read)? I even watch Fox News once in a while.

RUSH: No, no, no, no, no. I'm not implying that.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: What I'm illustrating here is that you're a blockhead. What I'm illustrating here is that you're a closed-minded bigot who is ill-informed. I am being patient and tolerant and I'm trying to explain this to you, and you're totally closed to it. I'm hitting you with piercing, penetrating logic, and it escapes you -- and it is irritating people like you that I revel in. I absolutely revel in it. I've got 19 sound bites here today, April, of media people going bat manure yesterday over what they think I said. They didn't hear me say it, either. They got it from the Huffington Post or they got it from Media Matters or they got it from someplace else. I did not say don't donate. I did say Obama will use this to help burnish his credentials, 'cause there's no question he will. I'll tell you something else I said, April: It took him three days to go out and talk about the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber. It took him less than 18 hours to get out there and start rallying people about this earthquake.

I'll tell you something else, April. I'm going to make prediction to you, and I'm gonna be right about this. Before the week is out we're going to have to be stories in the Huffington Post and other places that you read pointing out how fast Obama moved into action versus Bush during Hurricane Katrina. To accuse me of politicizing everything is to be ignorant about what I do on this program. I simply react to the left. They're the ones that politicize virtually everything that's happening from health care to terrorism, and I love illustrating absurdity by being absurd. And if you had listened to this program for a modicum of time you would know it. But instead you're a blockhead. You're mind is totally closed. You have tampons in your ears. Nothing is getting through other than the biased crap that you read. So I've had enjoyment here talking to you and illustrating that it's impossible to deal in the truth with you. I appreciate your calling and I appreciate your holding on. I grew up not far from Paducah. If I'd known you were there, I might have stayed.

So if you don't agree with Rush's approach to tweaking the media, if you aren't in the know like he is, if you don't "get" his jokes or references, you're a blockhead who either can't handle the truth or doesn't want to.

And really, Rush, is there a need to tell a lady who's asking a fair question about what she's read that she has tampons in her ears?

Practice your honors!

Rush has long established that you need to listen to his show for an extended period of time to understand the context of what he says. But how much context should be expected of us? And does it even matter if Rush enjoys throwing out more bait for the media to snap at? Rush isn't just playing the media like a violin; he's playing all of us. The controversy adds to his listener base, thus giving more ears to his advertisers, thus creating more value for his program and the stations that carry it.

The disaster in Haiti should be above politics. If the Obama administration bungles its role in the relief efforts, we'll deal with that then. But for now, politics isn't the issue. I'm praying for the victims and those helping them.

(Be a part of the solution! My station, KOLD News 13, has put together this page for information on how people in Tucson can help the relief effort.)

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