The significance of the attack on Limbaugh

Diana West says that something new and frightening happened this week with the blackballing of Rush Limbaugh from professional football: the demonization of conservatives has achieved normalcy in our culture. Of course the demonization of conservatives has been common for a long time. But when a prominent national figure is closed out of a legitimate business transaction, not for some offensive though innocent “racist” statement such as those that sunk Jimmy the Greek, Al Campanis, and Marge Schott, but for no reason other than that he’s an outspoken conservative, then clearly we have reached some new stage in the path of America toward leftist dictatorship.

This is made even more clear by West’s comparison of Limbaugh to Keith Olbermann, who spoke of Michelle Malkin’s

total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred without which Michelle Malkin would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.

“Such dehumanizing venom,” comments West, “doesn’t count as controversial, or even lightly strain [Olbermann’s] NBC-NFL connection.”

Meanwhile Limbaugh is closed out of football for—for what? For saying that a less than stellar black quarterback was excessively praised because the NFL was eager to increase the number of black quarterbacks? If so, then monstrously immoral speech such as Olbermann’s is allowed, while a perfectly legitimate observation such as Limbaugh’s is the equivalent of a career ending sin.

In any civilized universe, Olbermann should have been fired or punished for what he said about Malkin. There should have been a massive telephone campaign by conservatives, aimed at sponsors, aimed at MSNBC, demanding Olbermann’s head, and saying in the strongest terms that such dehumanizing speech about anyone should never be allowed on MSNBC or in the NFL. Was there such a campaign? Remember a few years ago when conservative callers got CBS to take a scheduled TV movie about Ronald Reagan off their broadcast network? That’s the power that conservatives have, but they almost never use it. As long as the left and the now leftist mainstream continue unleashing their aggression against the likes of Limbaugh, while conservatives fail to go after a truly noxious and unacceptable figure like Olbermann, the leftist dictatorship is going to keep growing.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 15, 2009 06:05 PM | Send