Limbaugh's Lies of the Week

Here is a summary of a few of this week's lies, distortions, and radio atrocities by Rush Limbaugh, the subject of my new book, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh's Assault on Reason.

It was a week of Limbaugh's crazed conspiracy theories, such as claiming that smart meters give "the government the power to wirelessly control your heat, your air conditioning, your water flow, your electricity all from the cozy central office."

Limbaugh reacted to the earthquake near Japan with great sympathy for the people killed there. No, I'm kidding, he actually used it to attack environmentalists, tell jokes, and discuss at great length how he likes to fly in his private jet over natural disasters, but he wouldn't go to Japan because he would have to land there: “Have you ever been tempted to take your plane and do a flyover in one of these big natural disasters to see it firsthand?” I haven't, because I don't have a private jet and I don't enjoy disaster porn. Rush, however, is very different from the little people he flies over in his jet.

Limbaugh joked about how the earthquake was 8.9 on the “Andy Richter scale” and wondered, “do the environmentalists cheer or do they pretend to be saddened by this?” Limbaugh claimed, “I have no doubt they're gonna try to claim global warming had something to do with the earthquake and the tsunami.” In reality, no one tried to blame the earthquake on global warming. But Limbaugh would never waste a chance to take a great tragedy and turn it into a mindless, nonsensical attack on liberals.

For Rush, the big news of the week was in Wisconsin, where he celebrated the Republican union-trashing as “a great and historic day” and added, “God bless and protect these courageous people.” Limbaugh argued that unions are evil because “95% of all deductions in dues go to Democrats,” which is both a lie and so incredibly stupid that you wonder if Limbaugh even understands that very little in union dues goes to political contributions. In another obvious lie, Limbaugh claimed that the Obama stimulus package led to “no roads, no bridges, no private sector jobs” and instead was all a political “slush fund” and “everything else was a fraud, everything else was a hoax.” Limbaugh also took the opportunity to make one of his classic racist statements, asserting that Obama's stimulus plan was passed because “he's the first black president, and therefore nobody dares utter a word of criticism of his policies.”

Limbaugh bizarrely claimed that “the public workers in Wisconsin are the wealthiest workers in Wisconsin.” The assertion that teachers being paid an average of $51,000 a year are the “wealthiest” workers in the state is simply insane.
Rush hinted that he would like to see some violence directed at liberal commentators: “How about we treat MSNBC and Howard Fineman like the unions and our government treat Fox News and have thousands of people surround their reporters, block their cameras, manhandle their reporters? How about if we do that? How about if we show up and we start physically assaulting MSNBC reporters like they're doing to Fox reporters?” But it turned out that the “physically assaulted” Fox News reporter wasn't assaulted by anyone.

Nevertheless, Limbaugh proceeded to blame Obama for the actions of crackpots and criminals, claiming that a death threat against the Wisconsin Republicans came from “the Obama Wing Of The Democrat Party. These Are Obamaites." Limbaugh falsely accused Democrats of “Molotov cocktails and the defacing of the Capitol,” even though nothing like this happened.

Rush repeated some long discredited lies, such as the bizarre allegation that masking tape had caused “seven and a half million dollars in damage.” And he made up some new lies about “union thugs going in, tearing down statues or whatever.”

Limbaugh falsely accused filmmaker Michael Moore of “calling for riots,” and Rush even made a bizarrely threatening we-have-erect-guns-and-they-have-limp-penises reference: “know these guys that keep calling for civil war and revolution, Jesse Jackson and Michael Moore? They better remember: All they've got are fire hoses. They can't compete with us.”

Limbaugh was infamously once caught by customs carrying Viagra with a fake prescription, and during his prosecution for buying vast amounts of illegal prescription drugs, it was revealed that he doesn't own any guns. Nevertheless, he is happy to proclaiming that his side has the erections and the guns in a revolt, and the left only has fire hoses. Don't try to make too much sense of this phallic metaphor involving fire hoses, the weapons famously used against civil rights protesters in the 1960s. A man of Rush Limbaugh's vast wealth can fly over natural disasters in a private jet, so he obviously doesn't need anything coherent to say.

Crossposted at DailyKos.