Rush said something controversial and debatable in terms of what inferences can be drawn from it.
Stoic made a deceptive thread in which she actively misquoted.
If you murder someone to point out a jaywalker you shouldn’t be surprised if people focus on the murder.
In this case the jaywalker is Rush, the murdere is Stoid and the murder victim is integrity.
As for the op, at least Rush didn’t say liberals need to be stopped like rampaging monkeys.
Perhaps if you think Stoidella should face your wrath for such crimes, you might start your own Pit thread, rather than seeking to bend this one to your own ends?
You might include your version of what is “debatable” about what inferences can be drawn from Limbaugh’s statement. What plausible alternative can you offer? :dubious:
It’s very simple. Limbaugh is saying that he doesn’t care what the reasons are for the things that are wrong; they are simply wrong and therefore must be combatted. He then listed several things that he thinks are wrong and liberalism is one of them. If I say I don’t care why murder, rape and drug abuse happens, I just want them fought at every turn, am I therefore calling all drug users rapists and murderers?
That is essentially Stoid’s position in the OP. The fact that so many posters to this thread, in their eagerness to lambaste Limbaugh and his listeners, either can’t see that or don’t care about it speaks to their own unreasoning bias and/or the ignorance they’re supposed to be fighting.
You are certainly implying equivalence. If I said I didn’t care why jaywalking and slavery occurred, I just wanted them to stop, wouldn’t you think that more than a little odd?
In my opinion – and again I don’t listen to him so this is speculation – Limbaugh regards the consequences of liberalism to be a serious issue and very damaging to this country. He also regards rape and murder to be very serious issues whose seriousness cannot be denied, and therefore uses them to illustrate how seriously he regards the threat of liberalism. But there’s no equivalence in terms of evil or skullduggery. He’s not claiming that liberals are breaking the law or physically harming anyone, or even that liberals are the equivalent of rapists and murderers morally; he’s simply using them to illustrate how seriously he takes the threat of liberalism.
Gorgeous comedy from one who basically tossed spaghetti at walls, er, posters on the off-chance some of it might stick. But the debate is solved now, quoth Bricker himself, disgusted to his very soul by the tawdry behavior of…well, apparently everybody. Kneejerk debaters talking past one another. In the Pit! About politics yet! The horror, the horror.
I was most struck by shodan’s demonstration of the civility and deep Christian values held so dear by conservatives. There is no proof that he doesn’t swear or enjoy vulgar music so he might have deeply repressed liberal tendencies.
Actually I rather loathe stoid for being so exactly the caricatured arrogant, snobbish big-L Liberal. Her world view is limited to affluent urbanites. She’s pretty much the anti-shodan, in fact.
So, not the best trainwreck-of-a-thread ever but it sure had its moments.
I see. So, its merely an innocent but unfortunate choice of analogy, then? He might have compared the effects of liberalism to, oh, an epidemic, or a climate crisis, or any number of impersonal disasters. But, being an amateur broadcaster, without much experience in the nuances and implications of analogy, he simply blundered into poor choice of words. Why, heavens, sort of thing that could happen to anybody who has but a scant few decades in broadcasting!
No doubt, in today’s broadcast, or no later than tomorrow, he will rush to clarify his unfortunate clumsiness, and make amends. Yes. No doubt.
Faulty premise. He didn’t compare them; he grouped them. There’s a difference. In my analogy above, would you say I was “comparing” drug abusers with murderers and rapists, or would you say I had merely listed them among a group of problems?
Whatever you mean here, you’d both have done better to spell it “Lighten Up.” ‘Cause I couldn’t think of single reason one would need an entire barrel of matches, or lighters, or somethin’ for lightin’ up a smoke.
At the risk of further miffing the hallowed master of rhetoric after he has spoken and ruled, but you are incorrect, and ridiculously so.
Saying that liberals need to be stopped like… mimes, lacks a certain urgency, or seriousness.
As a lawyer you should know this. If you wish to convey the seriousness of a criminal conspiracy you would not say that it was a scheme as sinister as Wile Coyote. The same thing applies to your other examples, reality tv producers, people who talk during movies.
A careful and intelligent reading of the rhetorical technique Rush is using will show you that he is not comparing murderers and rapists with liberals, directly but rather comparing the seriousness of the threat they represent.
Let me show you an example:
“Global warming is the most serious threat we face. Like the Nazis during WWII, it must be stopped.”
This is not equating global warming with Nazism. I am not saying global warming hates jews. It is clearly a comparison that begins and ends with the relative seriousness of the two.
Rush Limbaugh’s comparison falls into this category.
Now, for the whole Rush Limbaugh is an idiot thing. Rush is on for 3 hours a day five days a week. I’ve listened to him on and off for five or six years. Sometimes I agree with what he says. Sometimes not.
Personally, I think the idiots are those people who have never listened and judged the show for themselves, but rather form their opinions from carefully picked over and misquoted sound bites selected by his adversaries.
We get something like this once a month or so. To me, it demonstrates a great respect for the man, that the left feels they need to keep him under constant attack.