Weird. I’d say it’s COMPLETELY relevant.
Maybe Captain Amazing is simply admitting that hypocrisy is a conservative value. 
Even weirder, I’d say you’re off your nut. Limbaugh is about marketability. He sells virility products and self-help cremes and/or tonics. Unless and until you embrace this, you’ll always end up looking stupid in one of these discussions.
Drudge ran a story claiming that people close to ONE of the pages (there are at least five of them) claims that he wasn’t really gay and that he was only joking when he had some explicit exchanges with Foley via IM. There is no claim that Foley didn’t really write those IMs only that the kid was only pretending to be into it. That kid’s lawyer has now denied that there was any practical joke. This was not the same kid as the one who got the “overly friendly” emails and is not one of the THREE who have come forward to say that Foley made sexual advances to them when they were underage.
The thing that disturbs me is how there now seems to be a viral mem all over the net that “the kid said it was a prank,” as if there was only one kid and that a “prank” explains everything. Is talk radio (I assume that’s where they get all their info) really that dishonest and bereft of information that people can come away with such a distorted view of the facts?
Oh, blow me. “He is a defender of conservative values.” was the line I was responding to. There are a lot of conservatives who worship the ground Rush walks on, and following someone who embraces hypocrisy as a way of life is just plain stupid.
Most of the problems the Republicans are having right now can be traced right back to their “do as I say, not as I do” political philosophy.
kinda like Abu Gharib was like a frat prank gone a bit far?
Why? I mean, the guy is an entertainer. His purpose on the radio is to entertain his listeners and try to persuade people that the conservative/Republican position is correct. So long as he does a good job of that, what difference does it make how he lives his private life?
Oh, I completely agree. That makes perfect sense. Mark Foley is just a politician. His job is to get tougher laws passed to protect minors on the internet. So long as he does a good job of that, what difference does it make what he does on the internet in his private life?
I think most people would describe that situation as being a “shill” or a “mouthpiece” for conservative values, not a “defender” of them.
“Defender”, IMO, implies that somebody is publicly standing up for positions that he actually believes in.
Yes.
Really, what else is there to say?
Or am I answering rhetorical questions again?
Ok…“shill”, “mouthpiece”, if you prefer. And I have no evidence that he doesn’t actually believe in those values. He just doesn’t neccesarily always practice them. I know I’ve done things that I thought were wrong in my life…I’d be surprised if there’s anybody out there who hasn’t.
I mean, I think people should give money to charity, but I don’t really give anything to charity. The fact that I don’t live up to my standards doesn’t mean that those standards are wrong, though. Obviously, it’s better not to be hypocritical than to be hypocritical. But merely because somebody’s hypocritical doesn’t mean that the ideas he promotes is wrong.
Personally, I don’t agree with a lot of Rush’s ideas, but he is an articulate and clever spokeman (shrill, mouthpiece) for them. I’d certainly rather listen to him than somebody like Mark Levin, Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham, all of whom I don’t think are very good spokesmen, don’t have much of a sense of humor, and don’t articulate their positions cleverly. And that would be true even if it turned out that the three of them are pillars of rectitude and Republican morality, and Rush sacrifices babies to Satan at the full moon He’s good at what he does, and is entertaining, and, if I’m going to listen to him, that’s what I care about, not his level of morality.
True, but remember, Wendell’s question wasn’t “How can anybody still believe in conservative values?” It was “How can anybody still consider Limbaugh a defender of conservative values?”
The question is not whether conservative values are right or wrong, but whether Limbaugh can be considered a halfway credible spokesperson for them if he’s such a flaming hypocrite.
Personally, I think Limbaugh does an excellent job of embodying at least one of the core values of the politically dominant strain of modern conservatism: namely, elitism. Elitist conservatives don’t worry about hypocrisy precisely because they feel that the rules don’t apply to them. Rules are for “the little people”. In their eyes, one of the hallmarks of their status is that they can get away with doing what they like and not practicing what they preach. Hypocrisy, double standards, and contempt for the values they pretend to profess are not flaws in their eyes: they’re symbols of success.
Yea, but when you turn on the TV and you see an ad for laundry detergent, you don’t demand that the spokesman really think that Tide is better in getting out deep ground in stains than the other leading brand. And if you found out that he or she really had All in the cupboard at home, you wouldn’t be all that outraged, would you? And when you watch Casablanca, you don’t really think that Bogie loves Ingrid Bergman. People didn’t write nasty letters about how he was cheating on his wife with her They’re entertainers, and they’re doing what they’re doing for money. Likewise, Limbaugh is an entertainer, and he’s doing what he’s doing for money.
I don’t think that’s a fair analysis. Certainly we know when we watch a movie that it’s not real (mostly). Certainly we understand when we watch a commercial that the actors are paid for their efforts.
however, when some one sits and spouts off opinions, without any such disclaimer, I think that to claim ‘it’s all in good fun, I’m jus’ jokin here’ is, well, frankly bullshit.
The ‘comedian’ Andrew Dice Clay was I think, on better ground to claim that his persona was a joke, than would Rush.
Even weirder, those who use him as a source of information, when called on the fact that he spouts bullshit, state that he is merely an entertainer, yet still believe the bullshit. How odd.
I don’t think he’s joking…I mean, I think he really does believe the things he’s saying. To the extent he’s a hypocrite, ok, he’s a hypocrite. But the only people who really care that he’s a hypocrite are the people who don’t like him anyway and want to find bad stuff to say about him. If you like him, you don’t care that he’s a hypocrite, because he’s entertaining you and saying stuff that supports your opinions. And the people who like him are going to keep liking him no matter what he does, and the people who hate him are going to keep hating him no matter what he does, because nobody really cares that much what he does, because his personal life doesn’t affect any of us, and most people don’t get worked up about the stuff that doesn’t affect us.
Also, as I touched on, people all have their prejudices. As a rule, people don’t base their opinions on the facts. I know, you think you do, but trust me, as a rule, you really don’t. You come to an opinion on a matter, and you then find facts to justify your opinion. That’s the reason that people disagree…they all think the facts are on their side, whether they’re liberal or conservative, pro-life or pro-choice, pro-Iraq war or anti-Iraq war. Everybody has their own set of facts they pull out to support their prejudices, and when they find a fact that doesn’t support the prejudice, they throw it away, or twist it until it does.
I don’t see how those two statements can both be true. If somebody “really does believe” that, say, marriage is sacred and divorce is a bad thing, they probably wouldn’t get divorced. (Not three times, anyway.) If somebody “really does believe” that obtaining drugs illegally is wrong, they probably wouldn’t do it. And so on.
If somebody’s a hypocrite, that means that they don’t “really believe” in the values that they profess.
Then how do you explain the phenomenon of people actually changing their minds when confronted with facts they were previously unaware of? This does happen sometimes, you know, although perhaps not among Rush Limbaugh supporters.
No, you can believe a certain way and not act in conformance with your beliefs. I believe that people should exercise and not eat too much, but I don’t exercise enough and I overeat. A lot of people who know that smoking is unhealthy still smoke. It’s that whole “Spirit is willing and flesh is weak” thing.
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Then how do you explain the phenomenon of people actually changing their minds when confronted with facts they were previously unaware of? This does happen sometimes, you know, although perhaps not among Rush Limbaugh supporters.
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It does happen sometimes, when the cognitive dissonance is so great that they become psychologically forced to change. It doesn’t happen a lot, though. It doesn’t happen regularly.
What’s your goal here? Do you want to know, like Wendell, how people “can still consider him a defender of conservative values, now that it’s obvious that he thinks the rules don’t apply to him?”, or do you wanto to condemn the people who do?
Strictly anecdotal, but in The Worst Person in the World, Keith Olbermann notes that he knew Limbaugh before he hit the talk-show jackpot (when Keith was a sportscaster for ESPN), and believes Rush is fakin’ it. Someone with a copy of the book can look up the page and quote, I’m sure.
But is that what Limbaugh is saying? Does he admit that he doesn’t practice what he preaches, that he’s committing the faults that he’s condemned in others, that he deserves the condemnation that he’s lavished on other people who have done what he does?
Because AFAICT, the most he’s done is to acknowledge grudgingly that he’s “no role model” and lash out at those who try to hold him accountable for his actions and for the discrepancies between his actions and his professed positions. That’s hypocritical, IMO.
In particular (pace rjung), I have never seen him acknowledge that he’s just an entertainer and is only doing it for the money. An actor in a commercial freely admits that, say, the Tide company paid him to say that Tide is a great detergent. Humphrey Bogart made no secret of the fact that he and Bergman weren’t lovers in real life. Limbaugh, on the other hand, seems to be trying to wring as much mileage as he can out of the gullibility of those of his supporters who still give him credit for believing what he says, even if he neither lives up to it nor acknowledges his failure to live up to it.
To inquire whether there’s any way to interpret Limbaugh’s actions that would be consistent with principled adherence to conservative values. So far, apparently not.