Chew on This

The health care reform debate is reaching a fever-pitch as both sides dig in their heels for a final battle that will likely end with the dreaded reconciliation vote.  So, the Flying Monkeys are pulling out all the stops.  How low can they go?  It’s a high-speed race to the bottom of the moral bankruptcy barrel for the NeoCons in media as they stoop to mocking and ridiculing American citizens who cannot afford adequate health insurance.

Take Rush “Deaf by Temptation” Limbaugh (please), who during his Friday show mocked a woman who’s predicament he deemed the “sob story of the day” because she was forced to wear her dead sister’s dentures when she could not afford a set of her own:  “What’s wrong with using a dead person’s teeth? Aren’t the Democrats big into recycling? Save the planet? And so what? So if you don’t have any teeth, so what? What’s applesauce for? Isn’t that why they make applesauce?”

Let them eat applesauce?  Is that it?

According to Media Matters, Limbaugh previously told a caller who could not afford the $6,000 it would cost to treat a broken wrist that he “shouldn’t have broken [his] wrist.”  Yeah, and you shouldn’t have eaten all that fried crap and gotten chest pains.  Why’d you go to the hospital in Hawaii?  You brought it on yourself . . . .

Lay off the poor, El Drugbo.  We can’t all afford expensive surgical placement of cochlear implants when we destroy our hearing with shoebox loads of illegally-obtained Oxycontin. This episode was reminiscent of the time the cameras caught Rush’s big belly jigglng like a bowlful of jelly while mocking Michael J Fox’s Parkinson’s Disease.  Of course you don’t have a problem with a woman wearing dentures that belonged to someone else; you also have no problem taking medication for erectile dysfunction that was prescribed for someone else do you Rush? Sob story of the day? You’re the S.O.B. story of the century.

Not to be outdone, Glenn “Tears of a Clown” Beck jumped on the jocular opportunity to mock this poor woman, adding: “I am wearing George Washington’s dentures right now. I’m wearing his teeth right now. . . . I just like wearing dead people’s teeth. But in America — I’m sorry, I didn’t know that was — I’ve read the Constitution before. I didn’t see that you had a right to teeth.”

But you have a right to free speech, don’t you Beck?  Even to ridicule those of us who haven’t been handed tens of millions of dollars to spread paranoid vitriol and bile over the airwaves.

Don’t care about teeth you two clowns?? I know some folks who would volunteer to help you out with that . . . .

More disturbing than these callous comments is the total acceptance of them by their lemming-like fans.  Who are these people and what horrible thing has happened in their lives that they find Beck/Rush et al even slightly amusing?  Is the average Beck/Rush/Fox fan this sick and twisted that they find it so darned funny that other Americans cannot afford dental care?  What if that was their spouse, sister, or mother?  Still a knee-slapper then?

The Beck/Rush strategy is simple: target the fleshy brainstems of those Fox “News” dittoheads who know they’re getting screwed by the “system” and blame said screwing on the liberals and/or Democrats and/or “feminazis” who want to take away their God, guns, and money.  Who are these whiney liberals to bitch and moan about their suffering?  The dittohead is the true victim here and it’s all because there’s (gasp!) a Black man in the White House!

So it’s no surprise the Flying Monkey Media are using the “Dirty Dems are manipulating your emotions” argument to justify their latest attacks against those less fortunate.  These are the same hypocrites who screamed “death panels!” and warned that Obama was going to kill your Nana and send Paw Paw to the senior-citizen equivalent of a concentration camp.

These hypocrites who now cry “emotional manipulation!” are the same crew that devoted the better part of the last decade “catapulting the propaganda,” as Dim Son would say, using every slick trick in the book to ratchet up our fears of eek! terror terror everywhere! to justify the Bush cabal’s illegal, immoral wars.  Dark, swarthy evildoers were hiding in our victory gardens, infiltrating our playgrounds and even our lobster beds.  No one was safe anywhere, ever, as the constant candy-colored revolving rainbow-o-terror chart on TV drilled into our brains. . . . whatever happened to that?  That constant colorful reminder to be afraid . . .be very afraid . . . just disappeared, took the last train outta town bound for Crawford. Is this a tacit admission by the media that the true threat to American security was the Bush Crime Family after all?

That’s gotta piss off Rush, who doubtlessly finds it harder to hide his rampant racism now that there’s a not 100% white occupant in the Oval Office, especially after the dustup over his “Barack the Magic Negro” parody.  He can’t play quite as fast and loose with the epithets, like his infamous remark that all the composite drawings of wanted criminals look like Jesse Jackson (this from a man who looks like John Wayne Gacy).  Just as Glenn Beck can’t afford another lengthy “vacation” like he suffered after he claimed the President had a deep seated hatred of white people.

But the problem is, these Fox-backed fascists don’t reserve their stone-cold heartless mockery to politicians and public figure, as the late, legendary Molly Ivins once explained:

The kind of humor Limbaugh uses troubles me deeply, because I have spent much of my professional life making fun of politicians. I believe it is a great American tradition and should be encouraged. We should all laugh more at our elected officials–it’s good for us and good for them. So what right do I have to object because Limbaugh makes fun of different pols than I do?

I object because he consistently targets dead people, little girls, and the homeless–none of whom are in a particularly good position to answer back. Satire is a weapon, and it can be quite cruel. It has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful. When you use satire against powerless people, as Limbaugh does, it is not only cruel, it’s profoundly vulgar. It is like kicking a cripple.

Or, like kicking a toothless old woman in the mouth.  That was written way back in 1995.  Molly died before she had the opportunity to fully appreciate the delusional ramblings of Rush’s self-appointed heir apparent, Glenn Beck.

Keep showing those fiiiiine Christian family values, gentlemen!  You stay classy!

- Kathy Bay