Limbaugh's Racist Shocker: "We Need Segregated Buses"

[Joanne98]

By , Raw Story
Posted on September 17, 2009, Printed on September 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142706/

In a remark extraordinary even by the standards of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio heavyweight declared on his program Wednesday that the United States needed to return to racially segregated buses.

Referring to an incident in which a white student was beaten by black students on a bus, Limbaugh said: “I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.”

A full transcript of Limbaugh’s comments on his radio show is available at MediaMatters.org.

Limbaugh’s comments came after a called complained to say that local law enforcement said the attack probably wasn’t racially motivated. The incident had been hyped by the conservative Drudge Report, which posted a video of the fracas.

“Police initially said the beating of the white student by two black students appeared to be racially motivated,” the Associated Press wrote. “But police on Tuesday backed away from that.”

That didn’t stop Limbaugh from making his comments Wednesday.

“In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” Limbaugh also said. “I wonder if Obama’s going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.”

“White Americans are racists who have created what they call free markets that really just enslave the rest of America and her trading partners,” Limbaugh also mocked. “I mean, it was white Americans that ran off Van Jones. No, look, let’s just follow Eric Holder’s advice and not be cowards about all this. Let’s have an open conversation, an honest conversation about all of our typical white grandmothers. You had one, I had one. Obama had one. They’re racists just like our students are. ACORN — hey, nothing but racism fueling the pursuit of ACORN.”

Limbaugh also suggested that racism itself was acceptable.

“If homosexuality being inborn is what makes it acceptable, why does racism being inborn not make racism acceptable?” the talk show host asked. “I’m sorry — I mean, this is the way my mind works. But apparently now we don’t choose racism, we just are racists. We are born that way. We don’t choose it. So shouldn’t it be acceptable, excuse — this is according to the way the left thinks about things.”

The second set of comments occur in the audio clip below.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/142706/limbaugh%27s_racist_shocker%3A_%22we_need_segregated_buses%22

[no_hypocrisy]

1. I wouldn't mind a separate section for birthers and rw nutjobs.

Yes, that makes me a bigot.

[Zoeisright]

2. +1

[FiveGoodMen]

3. Who will rid us of this meddlesome priest?

[KansDem]

4. Would that be "separate, but equal," Rush?

What about drinking fountains? And rest rooms?

Will theaters be required to put in balconies?

Oh, and the lunch counters... Don't forget the lunch counters, Rush!

This guy gives slightly overweight, middle-aged white guys a bad name...

[BOSSHOG]

5. He needs to keep his moron base agitated on a daily basis

to keep the money coming in. limbaugh knows the only way he can make a living is by stimulating the emotions of the poor amongst us. He and his kind have never done anything FOR America. He's sad, lonely and pathetic. He has no friends, no one loves him, he has no one to love and he makes a living hiding behind a microphone and evading legitimate debate. What a fucking manly man.

[WestSeattle2]

29. You got it. Oddly, a large percentage of his audience are those

who absolutely loathe him but tune in to see what the gas bag will say next. If all those who loathe him would stop listening to him, he'd go off the air. This country has our share of incredibly stupid people, but the pool of idiots who listen to him, and actually believe that he believes what he's saying, is rather shallow. Anyone with a 5th grade education can see what he's doing.

[monmouth]

6. Beck's numbers must be worrying Rushbo....LOL..n/t

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. "Right on, right on?" This whole thing would be laughable if it wasn't for the

fact that his listeners just eat this crap up. x(

[imdjh]

11. One of the bystanders is on video interview admitting to cheering the attackers on.

To his mother's chagrin. (she was also on the interview)

[butterfly77]

8. This is one ignorant,silly,evil ass bastard...

how do these people believe the shit he stirs. What does big ass expect him to do answer for every little incident that occurs around the country,he also seems to think that everytime something happens with someone who is African American obama needs to chime in..

[imdjh]

9. It seems that Limbaugh has given up on trying to sound analytical and cogent.

Gone is his plausible presentation, and presumably his claim of being "always right".

It is not, however, a reason to pretend that this school bus incident isn't significant both in how it happens and how often it happens.

[subcomhd]

13. Except for those envolved it isn't significant - at all. nt

and Rush Limbaugh is a drug addicted pedophile according to what I have heard.

[icnorth]

14. That s.o.b. wouldn't know how to be analytical and cogent

even if Chuck Norris was squeezing his clappers.:grr:

[imdjh]

15. 20 years or so ago, before he really started to work the whack factor...

... his show was interesting and had a certain gotcha factor to it. That was when he was on TV and still had some rules.

[Ajaye]

10. Pool

On how long it takes before he slips up and uses the N word.

I say within two months.

[imdjh]

12. Never.

If you had tens of millions of dollars riding on never using that word, would you not purge it from your mind? Get hypnotized? Never speak without a delay?

[get the red out]

18. He could slip up and revert to some old ways though

He has some bad habits.

[sarge43]

19. By the end of the year.

Especially when POTUS pukes the Repugs on a health care bill.

[janedum]

16. Dumb Asses in Congress NEVER passed the Truth in Media Bill last year ..

So, Limbaugh, Beck and the rest just get worse and worse.

[get the red out]

17. I am glad he was so revealing

Let this hateful monster get some bad press out there.

[JohnWxy]

20. he is making it harder for Colbert to continue his schtick. How does he top THIS?

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. "this is the way my mind works" - that's 'works' in the loosest possible sense

It's 'works' meaning 'arrives at a set of claims that, however, have no logic or decency behind them'. Not 'works' as in 'functions as a normal brain does', nor as in 'produces a useful outcome'.

I get the feeling that Rush was not only born a racist, but he's chosen to be one too. If there has been some 'work' involved in Rush's life, it's been in upping his natural level of bigotry to heights seldom achieved.

The first time I heard Limbaugh on the radio (in a clip for the news), I thought he was the idiot bigot calling into the phone-in. I was left waiting for what this host 'Rush Limbaugh' was going to say in reply to the stupidity just demonstrated. It really confused me when they just moved on to the next new item. I didn't know then that the radio stations gave large contracts to people who sounded as if they dropped out of school at age 11 because they'd already made all the teachers and students hate them by being obnoxious.

[damntexdem]

22. Racism inborn? What a total racist dolt!

Racism is a social disease spread by the likes of Limpballs.

[AusDem]

24. at the risk of getting flamed

I'm not making excuses for the guy, because I think he's a dangerous character to put on the airwaves, but he was referring to this article:

Even Babies Discriminate

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214989/page/1

the conclusions of the article are a bit scary. I haven't actually read the study itself, so not sure about the soundness of the science behind it.

Not that it excuses his comments, just thought i'd give some context

[AusDem]

25. i should also mention that the article doesn't so much mention

racism in the sense that another group is inferior, just that babies and kids very quickly put themselves into a group based on visual factors, and the most obvious visual factor is skin colour. until it is explicitly explained to them that its not something that matters, they will automatically discriminate based on this.

so the article also says that when a group of 4-5 year olds were given blue t-shirts and red t-shirts, they formed a much closer bond to the kids with red t-shirts and considered them more virtuous than the kids with blue t-shirts.

Ash

[FiveGoodMen]

28. "considered them more virtuous than the kids with blue t-shirts"

Sounds like "The Sneetches" by Dr. Seuss.

A huckster repeatedly charges creatures to have stars added to, or removed from their bellies as these Sneetches try to maintain their social hierarchy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sneetches_and_Other_Stories

[damntexdem]

23. For years now, we thought that at least the racists didn't dare be open about it.

Now, with President Obama in the WH, they feel empowered to come right out and say it.

[FiveGoodMen]

37. A black president may have set them off...

...but it's hate radio and the megachurches that have empowered them.

Rush, Hannity, Beck, that fuckhead preacher praying for Obama's death ... they get away with that shit. They don't even lose their audience. So it's obviously safe to be open about it.

That's why they're empowered: We didn't crush the stupid motherfuckers who are leading the charge.

[winyanstaz]

26. It is past time to boycott this man, his shows, and his sponsors.

Racism is NOT inborn. Thats a load of Rush bullcrappy.

[santamargarita]

27. Why is anyone shocked by this racist pig?

:puke:

[billh58]

30. But some DU members say

that this sort of "criticism" of President Obama is perfectly okay, because is isn't really racist. It's just an ideological disagreement, and that calling it "racism" will harm the Democratic Party, and make the term less credible.

Just ignore Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, the Birthers, the Baggers, and the religious-right Town Hall Astroturfers, and they will go away...

[zoff]

31. And of course slimebag washes his hands ...

... of the hate he has stirred. Reminds me of one Pontius Pilate. But with all due respect to Pilate, he was a more sensible human being. The only segregation that should occur is his segregation from the USA and the human race, sent back to the ugly planet of hate and war and violence that he came from.

[struggle4progress]

32. Nope. We just need to build a 70,000 bed mental hospital.

[evenso]

33. Did Rush's commentary on school bus beating inspire hate crime in GA?

Rush characterized the school bus fight in Illinoise between black kids and a white kid as racially motivated. He exclaimed, "this is Obama's America: black kids can beat up white kids now." I wonder was the Georgia man who attacked the black woman at the Cracker Barrel listening to Rush, before the incident. Could Rush have inspired his attack. I think probably so.

[Hawaii Hiker]

34. Seriously, is there a worse human being, past or present, than

Rush Limbaugh?....I'm trying, but can't come up with a more vile & despicable piece of garbage than that drug addicted fatso, Limbaugh...

[BREMPRO]

35. Ramping up the controversy for fear of being overshadowed by Beck

let em go at it- the more they compete for attention with outrageous lies and controversy, the more fringe and idiotic they sound, the more they risk being tossed overboard by the advertising dependent corporate media that employs them.


"This sort of lunatic paranoia—touched with populism, nativism, racism, and anti-intellectualism—has long been a feature of the fringe, especially during times of economic bewilderment. What is different now is the evolution of a new political organism, with paranoia as its animating principle. The town-meeting shouters may be the organism’s hands and feet, but its heart—also, Heaven help us, its brain—is a “conservative” media alliance built around talk radio and cable television, especially Fox News. The protesters do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful—they all routinely liken the President and the “Democrat Party” to murderous totalitarians—but they are employed by large, nominally respectable corporations and supported by national advertisers, lending them a considerable measure of institutional prestige. The dominant wing of the Republican Party is increasingly an appendage of the organism—the tail, you might say, though it seems to wag more often from fear than from happiness. Many Republican officeholders, even some reputed moderates like Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, have obediently echoed the foul nonsense."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=482032&mesg_id=482032

[BREMPRO]

36. This statement is unbelievable...

“In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” Limbaugh also said. “I wonder if Obama’s going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.”

This has to be the most unabashedly racist and prejudicial fear-mongering and leap of an inconsequential incident to a broad political indictment of a president I've ever heard. No matter that according to police reports it turns that this incident was not racially motivated, and that kids these days don't see race as much as past generations and that there are THOUSANDS of racially diverse school busses where everyone gets along just fine- no- let's highlight one incident and characterize it as the beginnings of a race war, indite a president as racist (can't let beck outdo him) and suggest we go back to the fifties where blacks had there place at the back of the bus.

"you can't reorganize a village to suit the village idiot" -Frank Schaeffer

[espiral]

38. I remain amazed

...that the hate-crimes legislation does not cover stuff like this. Surely, this should be a punishable offense, particularly in a country with a centuries-long history of racism. Will he not even be fined for this shameful episode?