Fairness - The Commentary

Anyone paying the slightest attention has heard of right-wing talker Rush Limbaugh’s three-day rant against a female Georgetown University law student whom Republicans refused to allow to testify at a congressional birth control hearing. It wasn’t about one or two words Rush said but about days of misogyny and crazy-making bloviating. What did we learn from this latest display of Limbaugh? (1) Absolutely nothing new about Rush.  If we’re shocked, we’ve been living under a rock. From his beginnings on national radio, he’s been caught, lying, distorting, and misrepresenting anything and anyone that doesn’t sound right-wing enough for him, and calling it entertainment. Al Franken said at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner back in April 1994: “Most of us here in the media are what I consider infotainers….Rush Limbaugh is what I call a disinfotainer. He entertains by spreading disinformation. A year later the media watchdog group, FAIR, published the 128 page paperback  The

“Culture Wars” are back in the headlines. They actually never left politics. Right-wing leaders have been invoking the symbol of “Culture Wars”  ad nauseam  without attracting mainstream media attention. But now current Republican leaders and presidential candidates have decided to compete to prove who is the most committed cultural warrior. Ask activists in the field all this time. Among others, the idea of “War” has been used to justify support for Proposition 8 in California and to oust the Supreme Court justices who supported marriage equality in Iowa. Next we’ll hear it attempt turning back Washington State’s legalization of marriage equality. The “War” is also framed as a “War on Religion.” The recent flap about requiring employers, religious or not, to cover contraception was expertly turned by the right-wing into this larger “war.” Framing it as a “War on Religion” with reinforcement through right-wing fear of unbridled sexual license, politically seduces fundamentali