Can anyone stand up to Limbaugh?

[question everything]

StarTribune.com
Can anyone stand up to Limbaugh?

By TOM TEEPEN, Cox Newspapers

February 4, 2009

There's worry among Democrats that President Obama may have unwisely stirred a hornets' nest when he lightly gigged Rush Limbaugh, the radio gasbag who inveighs from the far right to millions of loyalists. Obama dared to suggest to Republicans that they might do better than turn to Limbaugh for the light to lead them from the darkness the last two elections have brought down around them.

This was hardly a vicious rip, but Limbaugh, as is his wont at even the lightest nick, howled as if armies had been sent against him and, true to their proud and unintentionally self-revealing label as Dittoheads, his listeners howled with him. Limbaugh talked himself into a froth over the next days and wound up declaring his ardent wish that the new president will fail. Rush, as he never ceases to remind us, is a great American.

In political circles, Limbaugh is accounted an 800-pound gorilla -- more or less literally -- who is better left alone to do his demagoguery unrebuked than confronted and thus provoked to spread the damage even more wildly. As a result, his daily spew of ridicule, mockery and distortion is the constant winner in a contest no one else has joined.

I wonder about that conventional wisdom. Limbaugh has always struck me as less a truly tough guy than a grown-up playground bully who is covering his inner crybaby with swagger and cowering behind a gang of followers who do his fighting for him. A recent victim in point: Phil Gingrey, a Georgia Republican congressman of indifferent distinction who, like Obama, wondered aloud whether Limbaugh was the sovereign remedy for Republican ills. Within a day, the Dittoheads had so swamped Gingrey with calumny and remonstration -- which is nasty, nasty stuff to be swamped with -- that he was begging to go on Limbaugh's show so as to prostrate himself before the great man in person.

(snip)

You have to wonder how well Limbaugh would hold up if someone -- someone who could command attention -- kept after him. Certainly not the president of the United States. But who else could -- ? Wait. The recount in Minnesota declared Al Franken the winner in that squeaker Senate race there. If the courts concur, the author of the 1996 best-seller "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations" will be a player of note in Washington. Sen. Franken, your agenda awaits you.

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/38938409.html

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

1. Al Franken's been doing it for years. nt

[lame54]

2. "Limbaugh is accounted an 800-pound gorilla"...

Did he lose weight?

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

3. It's the drugs. nt

[ErinBerin84]

4. it seems like no Republican can

The ones that do (Hagel, Powell) go "under the bus!" If there was a figure like this on the left that all Democrats were chained to, I would think that they would get made fun of endlessly.

[question everything]

7. Colber last night nailed him

with the "tonight word" "An Army of One"

http://www.hulu.com/watch/55997/the-colbert-report-tue-feb-3-2009 starting at the 4:30 mark.

[ClayZ]

12. Last night Colbert was GREAT! I would almost listen to limpballs today

just to hear him buzzing like a hornet in a jar! Na, his voice makes me clench my teeth!


K and R

[nxylas]

8. George Soros

Didn't you get the memo? All American liberals are secretly funded by George Soros. We are summoned to his secret underground volcano lair daily in order to genuflect before him.

[ErinBerin84]

14. hehe, I forgot abou that meme.

[Captain Hilts]

5. The idjits that listen them had parents that listened to Father Coughlin.

FDR: So true!
ER: My radio program was placed opposite Coughlin's on Sunday nights.
FDR: But stupid is as stupid does, old girl. People will believe what they will.
ER: Sad, but true. There is a constituency for 'stupid'.

[Hello_Kitty]

10. And in the end, FDR is a historical icon and nobody remembers Father Coughlin

It will be thus 80 years from now with Obama and Limbaugh.

[Captain Hilts]

13. U Toronto, for some reason, didn't feature Coughlin among their distinguished alumni...

at their anniversary a few years back.

I wonder why...

[Buzz Clik]

6. Fuck Limbaugh. Anyone who follows his political advice is doomed.

[dave29]

9. I'd be glad to

:)

[Solomon]

19. LOL Your post don' t look so good coming after the one above it.

:rofl:

[Life Long Dem]

11. America could if he sticks his neck out again like the last time

Campbell Brown will take her whip out and watch Rush run!

[FrenchieCat]

15. Limbaugh has a 21 percent approval rating......

Says that he is less popular than William Ayers and Rev. Wright! :)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4978611&mesg_id=4978611

[izquierdista]

16. Princess Leia did

But that was in the movies...

[obiwan]

17. I will take on that fat fuck anytime.

He's a sociopath. A drug-addicted, reality-denying sociopath.

I can deal with that.

[question everything]

18. I am curious. I have never listened to him but wonder: if someone calls

his show to disagree with what he is saying, does he even bother to debate or, like Orally, just shouts: "shut up!" and hangs up?