A letter to Rush Limbaugh
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100114/OPINION/100119985
Nice. I don’t care much about US American politics, but I do appreciate a good rant.
Hard not to like the die hard son of a bitch. Back when the intertubes were new, Ebert used to respond to his own email.
Dude’s a stroke-out and he’s STILL a total bitch! Ebert is pop culture’s Shephen Hawking, dragging his body behind him as his brain just keeps on going.
He should stick to movies. At least people believe he knows what he’s talking about then.
Esp. since he’s hooked up to a bunch of intertubes, now that half his body doesn’t work. I’ve not always agreed with many of his reviews over the years, but he certainly doesn’t have “give up” in his vocabulary.
The more I hear from him the more I am saddened that I was too young to enjoy Roger Ebert in his heyday.
goes back to watching back episodes of him and Siskel
Some people never know what they are talking about. Like Rush Limbaugh. I do find it illogical that somebody would necessarily be ignorant to the point of being presumptuous in talking about Limbaugh’s idiotic comments about Haiti. Even Limbaugh said he was just tweaking the media by saying things that the media would overreact too. In short, even Limbaugh in this instance knows that he utterly blew it. I wonder if his compatriots understand that every American would be justified in condemning his remarks.
They were both pretty bitchy.
Do you have a cite for that? If your description is correct, Limbaugh is accusing the media of overreacting (and predictably so); that’s hardly the same as saying that he blew it. Still, I have a hard time believing that he’d even come that close to admitting an error.
Finding his exact words is critical. If anyone could craft the perfect non-apology apology, it would be him.
Some people know what they’re talking about on more than one subject.
If you say so. Personal I don’t hang on any of Rush’s words as he is a big idiot. But in the interests of accuracy on something so critical, I give you http://www.wptv.com/content/news/centralpbc/palmbeach/story/rush-limbaugh-haiti-comments-obama-media-wptv/zY4rQ2r2PEWgoZM9GxPL1w.cspx?rss=762 courtesy of Google magic.
If you say so.
Me, I think Rush is only slightly less of an asshole than Pat Roberson.
I might note that virtually any idiotic thing that Limbaugh has ever said is captured on Google by summarizing blogs from all over the world. While even Limbaugh could not possibly fill up all the intertubes with his hateful brand of know-nothing bigotry, it seems that it is possible that all the commentaries on his blather on all the blogs in all twitterdom threatens just such an apocalypse, much to the relief of an infinite number of Shakespeare blogging macaques.
Lumbaugh confesses to blatant trolling? Shocked…shocked, I am.
See, I think part of what makes Limbaugh so vile is that, unfortunately, he’s not an idiot. As Ebert said in his letter, the guy knows exactly what he’s doing.
Clearly he’s very much on the ideological right, and clearly he has many differences of opinion with the current Powers That Be. There’s nothing wrong with that, in and of itself.
But I actually tend to believe he doesn’t really think in such black-and-white terms as he presents on his show. Instead, he’s very skilled at inciting outrage in certain segments of the population who understand the issues much less thoroughly than he does, thereby helping to turn public opinion against those he disagrees with, even as he’s well aware that the reasons he presents are disingenuous.
That’s worse than being an idiot.
At the risk of turning this into a GD thread, I do have to point out one thing: Ebert is upbraiding Rush for insulting the president. Hello, Roger? You yourself said MUCH MUCH MUCH worse things about GWB a few years ago, many times. I think you have become a hypocrite in your dotage.
Please stick to movies, Roger, so I can go back to pretending that I respect you…TRM (who hopes this counts as discussing a work of entertainment)
Since this is neither GD nor The Pit, I won’t point out the differences in the situations. (Do you have a link to Ebert’s Bush-bashing? Did he, perchance, object to an unnecessary war?)
It’s heartening to see that Mr Ebert’s brain is still working so well.
Roger Ebert is awesome. I used to antagonize him on Compuserve when I was a teenager. 
He won my love by being very bemused by it.
The issue here isn’t that Limbaugh is criticizing the President - in a vigorous democracy, that’s practically an obligation of citizenship. The problem is that Limbaugh, based upon absolutely nothing beyond his own vitriol, accused the President of using widespread devestation and horror to perpetrate a particularly callous fraud. That is pretty distasteful.
As you say, Ebert had a number of harsh things to say about the previous administration. But, whether you believe that the actions of that administration were correct or not, Ebert’s criticisms were not baseless. Bush did send people to Guantanamo, he did push through the Patriot Act, and so on and so forth. These are things that he actually, genuinely did - and Ebert believed that these facts were very regrettable. (Whether or not they actually were bad ideas.) Limbaugh is accusing Obama of doing things very bad things that he simply did not, and no one ever would, do. That’s the difference.
Despite Mr. Ebert’s primary profession as a movie reviewer, this particular thread belongs in Great Debates, not Cafe Society.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
Roger rawks!!