Rich Lowry: I dig those race-baiting political ads. But, hey, that’s just me.

Some days I really have to sit back and marvel at the moral chokehold the big right wing media players have over the mainstream media. Take the Limbaugh episode.

This character goes on the radio and cracks jokes about a man suffering from Parkinsons disease. Says he’s faking his symptoms. Playing for the camera. It’s right up there with your better jokes about, say, breast cancer or other knee-slappers like pediatric oncology.

In any other context this would be treated as a fatal breach of decency and taste. But he gets respectful coverage in papers like the Post (at least till someone there got wise and yanked the story). And in general the whole imbroglio is treated as Fox and his supposed symptoms and the Limbaugh backlash. And also, hey, Limbaugh said he was sorry for making fun of Fox’s condition and now only says he’s shamelessly exploiting his medical condition.

All the big names are afraid of him. He’ll probably be back on Meet the Press before the end of the year.

I’m not sure how much or if it’ll get much play. But there was a great passage in the president’s press conference today where he basically speaks on behalf of posterity and speculates about how future generations might look back and wonder how the American people could have been so shortsighted as to ditch President Bush’s policies ….

I know it’s incumbent upon our government and others who enjoy the blessings of liberty to help those moderates succeed because, otherwise, we’re looking at the potential of this kind of world: a world in which radical forms of Islam compete for power; a world in which moderate governments get toppled by people willing to murder the innocent; a world in which oil reserves are controlled by radicals in order to extract blackmail from the West; a world in which Iran has a nuclear weapon. And if that were to occur, people would look back at this day and age and say, what happened to those people in 2006? How come they couldn’t see the threat to a future generation of people?

Let’s be candid. Go ten, twenty, fifty years, whatever into the future. Which is more likely, that our descendents will marvel at the folly of our adventure in Iraq or marvel that the American people were too impatient to give his policies a chance?

George Bush, a man before his time?

Think about it.

TPM Reader JS …

Have you seen the video of Limbaugh talking about Fox on his show? Scarborough played it over and over and over again this evening, and it’s absolutely grotesque because as he’s talking, Limbaugh is jerkily
waving his arms and head around and mocking — yes, mocking — Fox’s jerky Parkinson movements for all he’s worth.

I think it may be the most repellent piece of political video I’ve ever seen. If that gets a little more play, I’d say both Limbaugh and Talent are toast.

Haven’t seen it. Someone must have Youtubed though. Anybody have a link?

Late Update: Ask and ye shall receive … Crooks & Liars has up the Limbaugh tape. He has it from Olberman, there’s a minute or so of lead-in. But it’s worth it.

Demonstration effect (from the Post) …

Horror at the bloodshed accompanying the U.S. effort to bring democracy to Iraq has accomplished what human rights activists, analysts and others say Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had been unable to do by himself: silence public demands for democratic reforms here.

The idea of the government as a bulwark of stability and security has long been the watchword of Syrian bureaucrats and village elders. But since Iraq’s descent into sectarian and ethnic war — and after Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, on the other side of Syria — even Syrian activists concede that the country’s feeble rights movement is moribund.

Advocates of democracy are equated now with supporters of America, even “traitors,” said Maan Abdul Salam, 36, a Damascus publisher who has coordinated conferences on women’s rights and similar topics.

Heckuva job.

TPM Reader VC on Rush …

I think that the Rush Limbaugh video clip where he is mocking Michael J Fox’s movements in the recent video ad that Fox made, is the most despicable and disgusting political commentary I’ve ever seen.

My mom had Parkinsonism for the last twenty years of her life, and most of those years lived with my husband and me. We watched her slow disintegration from the illness, and saw daily the various tremors and uncontrollable movement which was caused both by the disease and as a side effect of the Parkinson drugs.

Actually Michael J Fox was exhibiting very minimal to moderate symptoms in his ad; the fact is that this illness and the drugs can cause much more spastic and jerky movement than one sees in this ad. At times it got so bad that my mom couldn’t even keep her body sitting in a chair; she would virtually explode off the seat and then have a very difficult time sitting back down because her muscles were virtually in spasm.

For Rush Limbaugh (who I’m sure has never been troubled personally with this dreadful illness) to decide that this was “exaggerated, and totally an act” is beyond arrogance. It is a cruel and unspeakably hateful thing he has done not only to Michael J Fox, a heroic and beloved public figure, but to all the thousands of people who suffer with this disease. I think his punishment should be not only the loss of his radio show (I can’t believe anyone would listen to him on any subject after this) but that he should have to spend some time in a hospital ward that has Parkinson patients. He might learn something about the illness, and perhaps acquire a little humility along the way.

The comments, painfully, speak for themselves. The guy’s beneath contempt and shows a lot about what his movement has become. We have no Joseph Welches.

In an otherwise solid run-down of the Republicans’ Jungle Fever campaign against Harold Ford, Robin Toner has this passage …

The furor puts Mr. Mehlman in a difficult position. He has spent considerable time as the national chairman preaching the inclusiveness of the Republican Party and its openness to black candidates and black voters. He said in an interview Wednesday night that he did not believe that this would damage his Republican outreach efforts.

Officials with the Republican independent expenditure committee, who include longtime allies of the Bush political circle, did not respond to requests for comment.

Please. It’s not a difficult position, just a revealing one.

Like many in his position, on this issue Mehlman is a hypocrite and a liar. I doubt whether he has any strong racist dispositions himself on a personal level. It’s just a tool he uses.

Again, let’s be honest with ourselves. Racism is one of the key building blocks of Republican politics in the United States. Don’t look at me with a straight face and tell me you don’t realize that’s true. That doesn’t mean that all Republicans are racists. Far from it. It doesn’t mean that a lot of Republicans don’t wish the stain wasn’t part of their party’s recent political heritage. They do. But racism and race-baiting is the hold card Republicans take into every election. When times are good, guys like Mehlman ‘reach out’ to blacks and Latinos to try to take the edge off their opposition to the Republican officeholders. But when things get rough the card gets played. And pretty much every time.

This isn’t surprising. It’s expected.

For years on this site I’ve been saying that Democrats need to learn the meta-message behind Republican attack ads, especially on issues like terrorism and national security. Begging the refs to throw a flag in response to a vicious ad only telegraphs the message of weakness that was the aim of the attack in the first place. And in recent days not a few of you have written in to say, ‘Josh, you always say Dems should not complain but hit back. So why are you turning the sites over to complaining full time about the Tennessee ads against Ford?’

It’s a good question. And there’s certainly a tension there, if not an outright contradiction. But here’s my response.

I see the two cases as fundamentally dissimilar. When it comes to GOP race-baiting, calling them out, revealing them for who they are and what is they do, is fighting back. It’s that simple. The dynamics of the issues are fundamentally different.

There are different visions in this country. There’s one which for all its faults and shortcomings aspires to a national unity that transcends our many differences of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. and an equal share of dignity for all of us. Then there’s the school of division and demonization. (Take a look at the ads GOP campaigns are running across the country. The issue of the day is keeping out the Mexicans.) That’s the Ken Mehlman school, the tradition of Willie Horton ads and Jungle Music pasted over Harold Ford because these guys are afraid they may be about to lose an open seat in Tennessee, where they haven’t sent a Democrat to the senate for almost two decades. It must be a reality that Mehlman appreciates with some measure of inner tension or conflict since gays have been the whipping boys of choice through much of the Bush years even as he himself has been, successively, White House political director, Bush Campaign Manager and head of the RNC. But then we all make our beds.

The point is that as vile as this race-hucksterism is, for my part I welcome the opportunity that Republican desperation provides, to show these guys for who they really are. Scratch the surface of ‘outreach’ Mehlman and he’s a Southern strategy man after all. So, fine, bring it on. Cut away the veil and the mask. Let everyone come out from under their rock and be who they really are.

Let them lose their majorities and their souls.

Kerry and Kennedy do the right thing …

Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry are tapping their sizable campaign warchests in an effort to elect a Democratic Congress.

The Massachusetts Democrats donated 500-thousand dollars apiece, half to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and half to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

I would have liked to have seen a million a piece. But that ain’t bad.

And another point is important to make. Kerry has taken a lot of grief because he’s sitting on a big pile of money and he’s a very high-profile person in the Democratic party. But there a whole lot more money out there in campaign warchests of folks who aren’t in anything like a serious campaign. So who else is going to put money on the table? We’re under two weeks to go before the election and in only a few more days it’ll be too late. Late money goes for ads. And the day before the election is just too late. So who will match Kerry and Kennedy?

TPM Reader HL also isn’t crazy about Rush …

I found the post-apology “Okay-he-wasn’t-faking-it-but-he’s-exploiting-his-medical condition” even more insulting to people with Parkinson’s–and more dangerous–than his original faking conjecture. The faking suggestion (besides displaying ignorance, willful or not) merely insulted Michael J. Fox, not everyone with Parkinson’s. The claim of exploitation is an attempt to shut up people with Parkinson’s: anyone else can express their opinion about stem cell research, but if a person afflicted with Parkinson’s shows their face in public to do the same, s/he’s a shameless exploiter. According to Limbaugh’s logic, the actual sufferers should just hide in their rooms and not freak us out with their unsightly condition. Do you see what I mean?

Yeah, I do. The man’s a blight. As I said below, making fun of people suffering from a debilitating disease would send most folks into a career crisis. As TPM Reader DC says, “He’s vile; a real pig and a terrible terrible commentary on the state of our national life.”

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas — if you can afford the hush money? That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.