Rush, I Got a Bone to Pick...

Wow, have I been engaging in some lively debates lately! Just so you all know, I'm a racist, fear-mongering liar. At least, that's what friends of friends have called me -- and those are the kindest comments!

And those people also seem to think that Rush Limbaugh is a personal friend of mine or something. As if -- I mean, when it comes to the facts, El Rushbo is usually spot on, because he has to be. He's targeted so much, he knows he has to get it right. It's the analysis you may or may not agree with.

I'll flip by his show to see what he's talking about, but so many times I have to turn him off because he keeps using those goofy voices, making fun of speech impediments, making fun of what women wear, etc. I realize he's an entertainer, but why does the debate have to include derision?

On Wednesday's show (9/16/09), I was ready to throttle him. He was talking about the move by the House to censure Joe Wilson. Now I feel it's unnecessary -- he apologized like he should, the Prez accepted. Move along. But that wasn't good enough for the Dems in Congress -- they had to make an official motion -- cuz, you know, that's what they do. (And maybe they were a bit ticked off that Wilson was right about the absence of a requirement for proof of citizenship, and the Prez had to add a provision.)

So Rush brings up the fact that the House has official guidelinesfor what you can and cannot say about the POTUS. (Apparently, the Senate only has rules for what you can say about fellow senators.) If you look them over, some seem silly and others arbitrary -- e.g. you cannot call the POTUS a liar or a hypocrite, but you can call him a disgrace or a nitwit. (Elsewhere in the guidelines, the word "damn" has been ruled out of order, whereas "damnable" is permitted.) It seems like ma-a-aybe someone had a little too much time on their hands -- too much time wasting taxpayers' money -- but I can see where things could get out of hand, so someone had to put an ix-nay on the ad-bay ords-way.

Well, Rush voiced his grand opinion that these sort of guidelines were because of the "chickification" (I think I got that right) of our government. That it's because of the women in the House that there are these "mom rules" that "may as well be put on the refrigerator with a magnet."

Well, I don't know Millie Limbaugh, but I do have family in Cape Girardeau (that's "Ger-AH-duh" to the folks back there) and the moms there have refrigerators, and they put house rules on them with magnets.

What the heck is wrong with that? What's wrong with stating "A Member may refer to political motives of the President in debate. However, personal criticism, innuendo, ridicule, or terms of opprobrium are not in order." (Yeah I had to look up that last one: "reproach incurred by conduct considered outrageously shameful.")">Nothing. Someone has to limit the towel-snapping in Congress. It sure ain't going to be a man. It takes women to insist upon behavior appropriate of a gentleman.

For that sexist, no... MOM-ist commentary, it's a timeout for you, young old man. Sit down and write out one thousand times:

I will not make fun of women or moms, or their need to create some decorum and boundaries when there are MEN around.

And I will be counting those -- you don't want me to take your microphone away.

I'm sending this refrigerator magnet to my favorite Congresswomen!

Comments

[ChunLing]

Unfortunately, government--which is fundamentally based on appeal to naked force rather than suasion--does properly fall into the masculine domain. I do not necessarily love the fact that the world has been ordered such that men are expected to deal in brute force while women are considered superior in the gentler arts of persuasion, but both methods of problem-solving are essential to human survival. If dividing expertise in each between men and women is how nature has chosen to provide for your species, my aesthetic objections must respect that fact.

Of course, being a woman, you do not seem particularly open to considering that government is force, not persuasion. But then again, there is merit in that view. After all, I decline to accept the authority of your government precisely because I find its current rational unpersuasive, more than because I hold the force it in low regard. I would welcome a model of social organization that eschewed the official use of force by those exercising authority over society. But until the government is willing to rely on the moral authority of its injunctions, it must be understood to be the domain of masculine pattern problem-solving.

I wish it were the case that government could be a matter of reason and diplomacy rather than threats and coercion. Indeed, I entertain the hope that one day it may so be. But in the world as it is, such is not the case.