By ADMIN
Sarah Palin Hypocrisy and Myopia: Out of Control?
Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, in a closed door strategy session, called a strategy by some liberal groups to air ads attacking some Democrats who were balking at Overhauling health care reform, “f**king retarded.”
Though it has not used the term ‘f***king retarded,” this website has taken strong issue with certain ‘liberal’ oriented political strategizing views very recently, albeit likely for very different reasons than Emanuel may have. But the phrase itself is a comment slang expression for “very foolish,” and in almost call cases is not used, intended to, or even taken in any way to, refer to or impugn the mentally disabled. And if it were, or was, used in this latter fashion, this site would be among the first to castigate anyone for so doing, as a base and cowardly form of cruelty.
But that clearly has no applicability to Emanuel’s common slang usage. Usage, which, moreover, was being employed to refer to strategy alone, as an adjective, not to an individual or group of individuals.[i]
Yet Palin is outraged. And calling for Emanuel to be fired because of this.
Now let’s look at number one rated talk show host in America, and despite his far right leanings (or perhaps because of them), sadly sometimes cited de-facto leader of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh.
Our political correct society is acting like some giant insult’s taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards, retards….I think their big news is he’s out there calling Obama’s number one supporters f’ing retards.
Limbaugh almost never gets the facts correct [ii]. And here is no exception, as he ascribes something to Emanuel that is completely untrue -Emanuel didn’t call anybody anything; he referred only to a strategy itself as “retarded,” which is something very different from what Limbaugh stated Emanuel did and what Limbaugh did himself, and, if employment of this term is in fact offensive, far less so in this context than in Limbaugh’s case:
Limbaugh did not only impugn individuals directly, he said it multiple times, and he used the term as a noun directly, in describing a group of people. He also said it publicly, on air to millions of listeners, as opposed to in a closed door strategy session.
So if what Emanuel did is grounds for immediate firing, what might this much more egregious statement by Limbaugh be grounds for? Let’s ask Sarah Palin:
Sarah Palin, on Rush Limbaugh’s statement[iii]:
I agree with Rush Limbaugh
She also, ridiculously, called what Limbaugh said, satire (read the comment in blockquotes above by Limbaugh again, lest you have any doubts.) This is about as satirical as the speech Palin gave herself at the recent Tea Party convention. Yet in the spin world of Sarah ‘If BS were currency, she could bail out Wall Street herself” Palin, satire is a new magic word to simply employ, no matter how ludicrous, to shield or blind oneself from the reality of raging, pathological hypocrisy.
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Endnotes:
[i] Other, more reputable, sources, however, misrepresented what Emanuel stated as well. Here is the headline to ABC’s famous news blog, the note, with Jack Tapper, “Rahm Apologizes for Privately Calling Liberal Activists ‘Retarded.’” This is blatantly misleading, and can be ascertained even by a very careful reading of the very article itself. Ironically, Fox, whose online news coverage is not nearly as bad as their television coverage, which in effect serves as a ‘fair and balanced’ craftily veiled advocacy channel, did not mischaracterize Emanuel’s statements like ABC’s political blog did. Even the highly ideological, and often heavily slanted, New York Quote, got Emanuel’s quote right. How did ABC not?
[ii] Note that the Daily News, whose publisher, Mort Zuckernam, is considering a run for the Senate – simply repeated Limbaugh’s assertions as true when they were not. See note [i] immediately above, also.
[iii] Steven Colbert fairly effectively mocked this, by saying on air that Sarah Palin was a “f*ing retard” because Palin knows its okay to say if you don’t mean it, just like Palin said of Limbaugh (despite the fact that Limbaugh made it very clear he did mean it.) The far right but sometimes informative site Newsbusters, apparently missing the entire point on a show that is almost entirely satire (but yet not chastising Rush Limbaugh for calling people retards seriously), became heavily self righteous over this and in turn actually, and seriously, accused Colbert in its headline of blatantly calling Palin what Limbaugh had called Liberals, missing the entire gist of Colbert’s point even though it’s fairly obvious from the very clip they themselves play. This is a classic example of why the semi Orwellian named site “Newsbusters” is listed in the blog roll to the right, under “ideological.”
