On Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk radio icon and outspoken football fan said the idea that the government, as represented by Trump, could force any employee of a business to do something “scares the hell out of me,” and said, “No president should have dictatorial power over individual behavior.
“I am very uncomfortable with the president of the United States being able to dictate the behavior and power of anybody,” Limbaugh, whose syndicated show airs daily in Philadelphia on 1210 WPHT-AM, told his listeners. “That’s not where this should be coming from.
We don’t want the president being able to demand anybody that he’s unhappy with behave in a way he requires. ”
A couple weeks after saying:
Dozens of pro football players — at least some in every game Sunday — refused to stand during “The Star-Spangled Banner” in reaction to Mr. Trump’s recent statement that protesters should be fired.
Mr. Limbaugh told millions of listeners that conservatives should cheer because the decision by players to politicize the sport is backfiring
I heard Rush talking about this later in the week because apparently he got callers and stuff upset about his saying the thing against Trump. And he was trying to make clear that his problem is Trump and Pence increasingly involving themselves and pulling the stunt or whatever, that Trump's random tweet was just Trump, but since they've gone beyond that is what led him to make the later statement.
And he still got callers who didn't understand the distinction.
I'm less inclined to see this as an example of Rush shit-stirring, hypocrisy, etc. as he has long held a libertarian streak on these issues, along with his own personal background with the NFL owners, to where I find his position believable that he enjoys seeing ratings of NFL games drop, fans responding, etc. but wishes Trump, etc. would stop getting involved. Even if Trump's tweet was arguably the ideal catalyst for the conservative media to latch onto the non-issue to fill time with.
The worst part about Rush's drug addiction wasn't that he learned about addiction, the drug war, etc. it's that he re-found religion as part of his rehab. He was more apt to crack jokes about gays, transsexuals, etc. in the 1990s rather than give sermons about their secret anti-American agendas. Even his feminazi fanfare wasn't as tinged with social conservatism as much as it became for a while, rather focused more on their absurdity/hypocrisy/etc.
In terms of my weird obsession in the ideological views of talking heads, which has always sorta made Rush distinct from say, Hannity. There's a semi-interesting difference between his two old books at least from what I remember when I read them,
The Way Things Ought To Be which he wrote in the midst of the H.W. Bush presidency as a semi-autobiography plus basic political views that barely touches on culture war social conservatism other than him predicting future issues and
See, I Told You So which followed after the 1992 election and first year of the Clinton presidency and is a massive polemic against the Clintons, GODLESS liberals, Democrats, AIDS victims, abortion fetishists, America haters, etc. and has a chapter about how God created America when he wrote the Constitution in 1776 and so on. I'm just also realizing that's Pat Buchanan's massive popularity happened between the two books.
Speaking of books, I've heard his
Rush Revere series actually isn't too terrible for a children's historical series. But that might be the soft bigotry of low expectations?
