Saturday, June 14, 2014

Rightwingers behaving badly

If I didn't write a blog about pawning, I would not have known about this revealing rant by Rush Limbaugh. You should read the whole thing to get the true smarmy quality, but the summary is, a caller identifying himself as a pawnbroker called Limbaugh to know if his customers were accurately informing him about the state of the overall economy.

Yeah, go figure.

Anyhow, the pawnbroker mentioned that a client came in needing money to tide him over until he received his disability check. Limbaugh was offended that our nanny government pays disability to injured workers (although the workers fund the insurance):

RUSH:  Holy smokes! So somebody comes in, you say, "Why do you need the money?" and they respond, "My disability check won't come in 'til next week, that's why I'm selling you this Rolex" or whatever it is?
It was a lawnmower, and, yeah, pawnshops are in business to provide short-term, usually small loans to people who need a few bucks.

So, Mr. Sensitivity went on:

RUSH:  What are you actually trying to ascertain?
CALLER:  Just to see if, you know, these liberal friends of mine and, you know, them that are saying that the economy's doing so well, you know, but I see people every day that, you know, are not doing well.
Imagine finding people not doing well at a pawnshop. Have you tried the country club, Mr. Pawnbroker?

After some more incoherent exchanges, Limbaugh concludes:


RUSH:  Ask them what they think of swapping five prisoners for Bowe Bergdahl. Ask them what they think of concussions. Are they less inclined to go watch the NFL because they're killing the players?  You know, dress it up however you want.
CALLER:  Right.
RUSH:  Then ask how they're doing, why they need the money.
CALLER:  Right.
RUSH:  And then tell 'em it's not your job to provide it, and see what happens.
Actually, it is the pawnbroker's job to provide money.



The subtext of this exchange is as hateful as anything else you are likely to find in a conversation with rightwingers, and I flag it only because of the implication by Limbaugh that anyone on disability is some sort of welfare king buying Rolexes and crab legs with public funds.

Thomas Hobbes once described Man living in a state of nature -- that is, Small-Gummint Man -- as "solitary, mean, brutish, nasty and short." That's a good description of the friendless and often-divorced Limbaugh, don't you think?

Movin' on, what self-important singer's political opinions are you least interested in knowing about?

No, you cannot pick the hypocritical gas-hoarder John Denver. He left the gas at his mountain hideout instead of putting it in his airplane's tank and so he's dead. Howzabout Pat Boone, author of "A Miracle a Day Keeps the Devil Away" and the 1961 book of advice to teen-agers that sparked the Youth Rebellion, "Twixt Twelve and Twenty."

What has Boone done lately?

He has authored a racist rant about President Obama who is ruining the republic. Apparently the supply of miracles ran out.

Did you know that Pat Boone has been writing an "exclusive" weekly column at World Net Daily for nearly 10 years? I did not know that.

Pat Boone has been writing obsessively for over 50 years, and this week he had to fall back on that tired staple of the columnist who has run out of themes, the satirical dream:

In this dream, a "secret cabal of communist manipulators" selected a likely young "black/white" boy and groomed him for high electoral office, maybe even the highest. But first, they corrupted the elections at the Harvard Law Review to make the puppet "briefly" president of the Law Review, because, as we all know, American voters are terribly impressed by making the HLR.

Once again, you have to read the whole thing to enjoy the loopy weirdness of the rightwing loon in full flight.

So we have answered the question you forgot to ask, has Pat Boone done anything to offend public decency since fathering Debby Boone?

Yes, yes he has.





Maybe it was all a dream! How else, Pat Boone wonders in his WorldNetDaily column today, could America not see that “a secret cabal of Communist manipulators” had trained a “young black/white college student, originally school in Indonesia” to be a cunning politician after getting him "admitted to Columbia and then Harvard”? - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pat-boones-bad-dream-blackwhite-communist-becoming-president#sthash.2BRDcEym.dpuf

Maybe it was all a dream! How else, Pat Boone wonders in his WorldNetDaily column today, could America not see that “a secret cabal of Communist manipulators” had trained a “young black/white college student, originally school in Indonesia” to be a cunning politician after getting him "admitted to Columbia and then Harvard”? - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pat-boones-bad-dream-blackwhite-communist-becoming-president#sthash.2BRDcEym.dpuf
Maybe it was all a dream! How else, Pat Boone wonders in his WorldNetDaily column today, could America not see that “a secret cabal of Communist manipulators” had trained a “young black/white college student, originally school in Indonesia” to be a cunning politician after getting him "admitted to Columbia and then Harvard”? - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pat-boones-bad-dream-blackwhite-communist-becoming-president#sthash.2BRDcEym.dpuf
 


5 comments:

  1. The subtext of this exchange is as hateful as anything else you are likely to find in a conversation with rightwingers, and I flag it only because of the implication by Limbaugh that anyone on disability is some sort of welfare king buying Rolexes and crab legs with public funds.

    Once upon I time I was the Chief of Safety at an Air Force Base. Since it was a pilot training base without any deployment commitment, a lot of base functions were civil service jobs.

    The first item of every weekly meeting was the ongoing efforts to ferret out the disability malingerers.

    You might also want to delve into the disability trends over the last forty or so years.

    Despite vastly improved healthcare, physical therapy, and workplace safety, disability claims are something like 12 times greater now.

    Yep. You are right. Nothing to see there.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Now, having read the transcript, I would very much like to know which part of the transcript implies that anyone on disability is a welfare king.

    If syntax, word definitions and context have any place at all in determining a speaker's meaning -- a stretch, I know, for progressives -- then that implication just isn't there.

    [Pat Boone] has authored a racist rant about President Obama who is ruining the republic.

    Which part, exactly, is racist?

    If you need to refresh the concept in your head, this will help: "Arabs aren't interested in democracy."

    ReplyDelete
  3. Are you contending that they are? Evidence, please.

    I can think of at least one reason disability claims are up. Public opinion no longer approves of allowing employers to discard injured workers like worn out doormats.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I can think of at least one reason disability claims are up. Public opinion no longer approves of allowing employers to discard injured workers like worn out doormats.

    Which would reduce disability claims ...

    Just as much as the significant increase in workplace safety.

    Do you always gut-shoot your own arguments?

    ReplyDelete