November 22, 2006

Limbaugh: What's Up With That?

Every morning, my husband listens to local commercial talk radio as he gets ready for work. It's a long-standing ritual for us. During my working years, I often wished I could listen throughout the morning, but rarely had the chance. Now, at long last, I have the freedom to listen almost whenever I choose.

Here in corn country, commercial talk means conservative talk, including Rush Limbaugh. Initially, I enjoyed listening to him, despite his politics. Occasionally, he'd have hilarious gag bits, and I always picked up on some news tidbit or gained an insight that I didn't get anywhere else. In recent months, Rush has changed. He's become progressive in one area: his march toward anger, bitterness, divisiveness, and away from humor, news, and meaningful commentary. (For more, see I Don't Listen Much Anymore by Christopher Taylor.)

His tone is bothersome and, these days, I often change the station after listening to his opening. But something else is happening that may end it for me: an over-the-top obsession with sex-related stories. He often drops the occasional lascivious remark about this or that female, from which we might draw conclusions about his relationships with women. But lately he covers things like the Votergasm and Global Orgasm web sites as if he's obsessed, describing ad nauseum how he imagines it will work. Because these "movements" have liberal political agendas, I can understand that he would want to poke fun at them, but he goes well beyond that. When the story broke about Senate candidate Jim Webb's sexually shocking novel, Limbaugh read portions of it on the air. Granted, he warned listeners that it would be shocking and explicit, but if it's so bad (and it was), why read so much of it--or any of it--on the air?! And the day the story broke about Janet Reno filing a law suit against the Bush Administration, Rush was all over 'Global Orgasm for Peace.' I wanted to hear his comments on the Reno suit but changed the station while he was beating 'orgasm' into the ground.

Many years ago, a very wise and humble man once told me that whenever you find an arrogant man with too much power and influence, you will find a man with scandalous sexual secrets. Since then, I've seen it many times. Haven't we all? Humpty Dumpty gets a little too reckless.

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