Rush Limbaugh's (Politically Correct) America

When I was in university, a professor once pointed out that if you can control definitions, you can dominate terms of the debate. He was talking about the practice by one-party regimes to include the word "democratic" in their official names. If they did, it was a sure give-away they were anything but democratic. It was a sly use of language and one that applies to the debate between liberals and conservatives over the notion of political correctness.

First, consider the brief historical context. After the big government push for economic justice and civil rights of the Great Society in the 1960s, that high water mark for contemporary liberalism gave way as a white backlash powered the subsequent Republican restoration. Traditional Democratic ideas about how best to achieve a more just society were deemed bankrupt. What did the country have to show for it? Riots in our big cities and stagflation at home, bloody military stalemate overseas and a loss of U.S. prestige - for the right, all this offered testimony galore about the bankruptcy of liberal political thinking.

So it was that the right began to savage liberal critics of the dismantling of LBJ's welfare state as being out of step with middle America. This was the crew which had led us into this mess and now they were too `politically correct' - let alone intellectually inert - to rethink their wrong assumptions. You didn't need to strain to get the point.

It was a brilliant catch-all phrase that embodied the zeitgeist of the Reagan era in which pointy-headed elites from the two coasts were derided for not having the faintest clue about what 'real Americans' thought. Along the way, it allowed the right to let loose with verbal fire and brimstone and get way with in-your-face pyrotechnics that once would have been considered beyond the pale.

And so if a Pat Buchanan or a Michelle Malkin or a Rush Limbaugh now takes heat for making tone-deaf comments about particular ethnic, racial or religious minorities (especially those identified as liberal-leaning), they automatically pull out the PC card. Try as they do to fight their PC image, the left can only look on with envy because this favorite tack works, time and again for conservatives.

Limbaugh, who has skillfully used the PC tag to bash liberals as he plays the role of martyr over the years, is again caught up in another another mini-`controversy.' This time it's the decision by sports mogul Dave Checketts to drop Limbaugh from an investor group mulling the purchase of the St. Louis Rams football franchise.

In a Saturday opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Limbaugh again lashed out at critics who said his comments on race should disqualify him from being part of an ownership group in a sport where the majority of the players are African-Americans. In response, Limbaugh wrote:

"Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source.

The source of his perturbation was a false attribution expressing support for slavery. Limbaugh was right to be outraged. News organizations which ran that statement failed to first verify its authenticity. Easy enough to understand why El Rushbo is ticked. However, he remained silent about the following quotes, which are entirely accurate.

July 24, 2007: "Hey Barack Obama has picked up another endorsement: `Halfrican-American' actress Halle Berry. As a `Halfrican American' I am honored to have Ms. Berry's support as well as the support of other `Halfrican Americans'..."

January 22, 2009: "We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles ... because his father was black."

July 27, 2009: "He's an angry black guy..I do believe that about the president. I do believe he's angry. I think his wife is angry."

Oct. 15, 2009: The NFL is "an outpost of racism and liberalism, which is what it is."

Fair-minded people can debate whether the quotes are evidence of unresolved racial feelings or the purposely provocative outbursts of a radio jock who delights in pulling critics' chains. But the kabuki-like response from Limbaugh defenders, which was to be expected, has undercut any semblance of a searching debate. Not that any of this should surprise anyone. Even the mildest suggestion that many find his statements irritating or offensive only invites a standard PC defense - with one difference: In Rush Limbaugh's America, it's the political correctness of the right that has triumphed.