Still Not A Fair Fight

Main Column, 27 October 2006

Memo to Republicans: THAT'S NOT TOUGH.

It's rapidly becoming obvious that, aside from all the Republicans who secretly want hot gay sex, there's another group of Republicans with a secret desire. A secret desire to punch disabled people in the face.

Seriously - there was the Max Cleland bullshit two years ago, where they tried to make people think a guy with no legs and one arm was in league with Osama Bin Laden. What some would call ludicrous, insane, and vile, they call "warming up for '06".

First we've got Barbara Cubin, Republican candidate for the House in Wyoming, going up to her debate opponent for a little apres-tete-a-tete. Specifically, telling him "If you weren't sitting in that chair, I'd slap you across the face." The chair was a wheelchair, which he needs because he has multiple sclerosis. And it wasn't even her Democratic challenger! It was the LIBERTARIAN.

How much of a wuss do you have to be to feel threatened by a libertarian with MS? What are they gonna do, bitch about taxes from over there? But Barbara Cubin felt the need to man up by threatening to slap one. Classy.

And of course, there's Rush Limbaugh picking a fight with Michael J. Fox. You've heard all about this by now. I'm not sure why anybody's surprised. Rush Limbaugh, who, I must point out, has a limp useless penis, only barely qualifies as human by his DNA which most of his listeners don't believe in anyway. His job is to say stupid vile things to stupid vile people.

Oh, sure, even by Limbaugh's ridiculously devalued standards, doing a bad, wiggling impersonation of a Parkinson's sufferer while implying they're faking it does place itself squarely nine inches beyond a pale that's already so pale it's undetectable by radar. But still. Rush Limbaugh saying a stupid thing that's instantaneously contradicted by solidly established medical fact is not an uncommon occurence.

But what I cannot figure out is how, even in the shitbucket that is the national media two weeks out from an election in which the people they've been sucking up to for somewhere between six and 20 years are in actual danger of being thrown out on their ass, even under these circumstances, is how the guy making fun of the afflicted, whose whole point is based on an assumption that's not just wrong, but is in fact 180 degrees opposed to reality, gets to be ONE SIDE OF A CONTROVERSIAL DEBATE.

Matt Lauer, on the Today Show: "Didn’t Rush Limbaugh just say what a lot of people were privately thinking?" Um, no. As far as I know, the list of people who diagnose other people as "just fine" when they're actually in dire medical straits are Limbaugh and Bill Frist.

This is not a difficult story to report. Stupid impotent man says stupid wrong thing, and IS WRONG. He says this stupid wrong thing because a well-liked 80's actor is pointing out, quite fairly, that certain political candidates have decided that microscopsicles are more important than well-liked 80's actors. And that makes the blastula-huggers look colder than the embryos they're hiding behind.

So Limbaugh says "I think he's faking it", which instantly turns into "Rush proved he faked it" in the minds of millions of dipshittoheads, which turns into "I don't know if he faked it or not, but the larger issue is that this is ultimately the Democrats fault for getting someone with a stake in an issue to go on the record supporting that issue" on cable news shows. It's insane. Even two weeks before the election, it's insane.