In this thread, spoke- states that “surely no one takes him [Rush Limbaugh] seriously”. So, I ask an admittedly vauge question: Do you?
I do.
You damn well better, or he’ll sit on you!
In a way…
sometimes when he actually looks at the “other side”…
but most of the time he seems to just be a pompous asshole…
He’s not fat anymore.
I take him seriously. He presents good, reasoned arguments. True, sometimes he rants, and true, he only presents the side he agrees with…but if he were an actual debate participant, I think he’d be extremely formidable.
I took his first book seriously. He had good, reasoned arguments, and a lot of serious points to make.
His second book, however, was a collection of “neener, neener” rebuttals to bad things people had said about his first book, which kinda took the steam out of the fervor of my support. Bad form. No biscuit.
Actually, the Left takes him VERY seriously. FAR more seriously than we on the Right do! The Left hates Rush a lot more than the Right loves him.
Conservatives may listen to him or they may not, but when they do, they’re usually just looking to be entertained. I may agree with him more often than not on the rare occasions I listen to him, but I know that, ultimately, he’s just an entertainer, a DJ with a schtick (to his credit, Limbaugh has admitted as much, many times). It’s the Left that treats him as a serious force to be feared.
I find that a lot of people seem to take him seriously until he says something bizarre or untrue, at which point the same people declare that he is for entertainment purposes only. Kind of like the condoms you see for sale in gas station bathrooms.
astorian, I’d say that Limbaugh’s chacterization of himself as an entertainer in the guise of a serious political commentator would be more to his discredit, but that’s just me. I’m curious, does he make that admission regularly on his radio show?
Why single out Rush? Why not ask if we take, say, Dan Rather seriously? Or Time magazine? Or CNN? Or Dennis Miller? Or Sean Penn?
Rush is simply a guy who offers commentary on current events.
Actually, yes. Just today he mentioned it. He realizes that whatever his experience and background may be, he is still an entertainer. He characterized his position as merely an educated entertainer trying to persuade people to agree with him.
Whether you agree with him on most topics or not, I don’t think you could say that he takes himself too seriously.
Here’s a couple of choice quotes from that link:
Wow. How could anyone take this guy seriously?
neutron star,
LIMBAUGH: In an attack on Spike Lee, director of Malcolm X, for being fast and loose with the facts, Limbaugh introduced a video clip of Malcolm X’s “daughter named Betty Shabazz.” (TV show, 11/17/92)
REALITY: Betty Shabazz is Malcolm X’s widow.
Wow, that’s some pretty hard-hitting stuff. The gist of the website you provide (which appears not to have been updated since '94, by the way) is that Limbaugh isn’t a scientist. So what? Who in the world would trust what ANYBODY says without a cited source? And how is the above any worse than, say, CNN’s infamous “expose” called Operation: Tailwind, a story that was SO discredited it led to the firings of at least two CNN producers? Do you still consider CNN a reputable news source?
My question stands: why not subject CNN, Rather, Brokaw, et al. to the same rigorous fact-checking standards that Rush is apparently held to?
My mistake. It appears the site has been updated at least once since '94.
That said, where are the websites dedicated to the mis-statements of, say, Jon Stewart? Or Larry King? Or Jay Leno?
Why is Limbaugh singled out?
Just curious…
As the one who did the “singling out”, at least in this thread, I was just curious about opinions here. But by all means, start a thread on whomever you see fit.
Uh, a lot of Limbaugh’s mistakes hardly seem unintentional. Ever hear Tom Brokaw accidently say that nicotine isn’t addictive and that cigarettes don’t cause disease?
You don’t have to be a rigorous fact-checker to avoid completely making up statements and printing them in a book (I’m referring to the Madison “quote”).
I also find it interesting that you found it neccessary to pick the weakest example from that page, the one that was most likely to be an honest mistake, and hold that up while ignoring everything else. Talk about a straw man…
neutron star,
So Limbaugh found and cited a scientist who claimed that tobacco isn’t addictive. So what? Also, I notice that the very quote the site references…
LIMBAUGH: “It has not been proven that nicotine is addictive, the same with cigarettes causing emphysema [and other diseases].” (Radio show, 4/29/94)
…proves Rush said that it hadn’t yet been proven that nicotine is addictive. Yet you seem to imply with your reference to Brokaw that Rush STATED AS FACT that nicotine isn’t addictive, etc. Ironic that you take Rush out of context in order to prove a point, isn’t it?
The problem isn’t that he states his opinion. It’s that he presents his conjecture as fact. Here’s an excerpt of the first Chapter of “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot” by Al Franken:
Read the whole chapter on Amazon.com here.
YES