Al Franken was wrong. Rush Limbaugh is not a big, fat idiot. He’s a big, fat, purple, cephalopod sea witch.

Recently, Rush Limbaugh called President Obama “this little boy, this little man-child President” and I’m sure he’s proud of the way he thinks he was able to get away with using the word boy to describe a black man.  If called on it, he could claim he was insulting the President in purely colorblind fashion.

After all, didn’t “liberal” columnist Maureen Dowd routinely refer to President Bush as the Boy King?  And how many of Bush’s detractors denigrated him as our “frat boy” President?

Calling Obama immature, how’s that any different?

Right, Rush.  So, fine, let’s look at what you said as if you meant only that.

Barack Obama a man-child?  Barack Obama immature?  Kind of like trying to insult you by calling you skinny.

Barack Obama is about as grown-up a grown-up as this country produces.  He’s temperate, sober, judicious, thoughtful, reflective, slow to anger, self-restrained and almost superhumanly self-disciplined.  The only modifier you could add to any of those descriptors is too. 

Whatever you think of the slimness of his resume compared to other would-be Presidents and his qualifications for the Oval Office, that resume and the progress of his career through his school years,  through college and law school, through his time as an activist, teacher, and state legislator, and up on through his short tenure in the Senate are testaments to his work ethic.  It is the record of a young man in a hurry who has been remarkably self-disciplined, diligent, ambitious, industrious, and busy.

He’s been married for seventeen years to a woman with similar energy, self-discipline, ambition, and industry, another obvious grown-up, with whom he is obviously if not mushily in love, and she with him.

He is the father of two lively, apparently happy daughters who adore him.

You can come up with all kinds of insults for anybody, but to stick they ought to have a least a glancing relation with the truth.  You can insult the President, it’s a grand American tradition, but to call Obama a “man-child” is to aim wildly off target, like calling Kennedy bald or Lincoln short or George W. Bush an egghead.

And to add, as Rush did, that Obama’s “primary job, if you will, in life has been leisure. This guy is more practiced at leisure than anything else" comes close to adding about Bush that he was workaholic.

Reality, of course, is not Rush Limbaugh’s stock in trade.  But, really, is it a good idea for him to accuse another man of being immature?

Limbaugh has been married and divorced three times.  He has no children.  He’s a confessed drug addict who couldn’t even take responsibility for feeding his own habit, he sent his housekeeper out to score pills for him.  He’s nipped over to the Dominican Republic to buy drugs and troll for sex.  And as for work, what’s he done all his adult life but make a living sitting in a chair and shooting off his big mouth?  It’s a living, but it ain’t road construction, brain surgery, or Presidenting.

You’d think his tongue would snap off his roller before he dared people to compare his biography to President Obama’s, if you didn’t know he was utterly shameless.

But why don’t his listeners start laughing at him when he’s so obviously projecting?

But then why didn’t they laugh at the big fat slob when he made fun of the size of Hillary Clinton’s behind?

Why didn’t they laugh at him when he called members of the military who were critical of the war in Iraq “phony soldiers?”  Rush the never any kind of soldier because he dodged the draft, calling men and women who volunteered to serve “phony soldiers” should have ended his career on a note of high hilarity.

You might as well ask why Ariel listens to Ursula long-enough to make that deal trading her voice for a pair of legs.

In fact, the sixteen year old was asking just that the other night when he and I went out for pizza after his karate class the other night. 

I don’t remember how the topic came up, but young Ken Mannion said he couldn’t understand why Ariel fell into the trap Ursula was setting when Ursula was so obviously someone not to be trusted.

What’s more, she was someone Ariel’s friends and family warned her to swim well clear of.

Ken, by the way, was pointing out what he saw as a failure on the part of the people who made The Little Mermaid.  He thought they should they should have made Ursula less repulsive so that it would be more believable when Ariel acted the very opposite of repulsed by her.  As it is, Ariel looks pretty darn dumb, he said.

Why is she such a chump? he asked, not using the word chump, because he was born too late to have inherited the great words.

His question gave me the chance I’m always looking for to go all Ward Cleeverish on him.  “Son,” I said in my most wise dad way, and if I smoked a pipe I’d have reached for it, although it was Jim Anderson who smoked a pipe not Ward Cleever, but that’s ok, I was feeling very Father Knows Bestish too.  “Son, I’d have thought the same thing when I was your age,” I said or words to that effect.  “But time and experience have taught me that the smartest of us can grow suddenly dumb as bricks when we’re suddenly given the choice between what’s the smart thing to do and what we want.”

A real life Ursula could be twice as ugly and would still only have to work a quarter as hard to con a real life Ariel if she seemed to be offering what Ariel had her heart set on.

“Ursula,” I said, and now I’m really quoting myself, “was telling Ariel what she wanted to hear and people have a habit of believing what they want to hear without question.”

It was at this point I realized that as much as I was describing anyone, and I was describing everyone at some point in their lives, I was describing Rush Limbaugh and his dittoheads.

The answer to Ken’s question, why can’t Ariel tell just by looking at her that Ursula is not to be trusted is that she’s not looking at Ursula.  She doesn’t see her.  She’s looking at her dream of a life on land with her Prince.  That’s all she sees.  She hears Ursula but Ursula’s only saying what Ariel is thinking.  Ursula is barely more than an echo of Ariel’s own thoughts.

It’s the same for Rush’s dittoheads, who are misnamed, because it’s actually Rush who is the one saying, “Ditto,” to them.  He’s echoing their own thoughts.  He’s just able to rephrase those thoughts---really, phrase those thoughts.  It’s probably wrong to call the feelings and beliefs of the dittoheads thoughts because thoughts need to be put into words before they become thoughts.  The dittoheads feel things, mainly that they have been wronged or robbed in some way they can’t explain until Rush puts words to those feelings.  Rush tells them what they are “thinking” in words and phrases that sound intelligent, even witty but he isn’t telling them anything new to them.  They already know what he’s saying is true, they feel it in their guts, and all Rush is saying is, “You’re exactly right to feel the way you do.”

He tells them what they want to hear, and he, in himself, is almost irrelevant.  They don’t see him for what he is because they aren’t looking at him any more than Ariel is looking at Ursula.

In fact it’s important that they literally can’t see him.  He’s a disembodied voice coming out of their radios, which they probably aren’t looking at at the moment anyway as they listen with half their attention on something else.  That makes him more effective.  His voice gets inside their heads and becomes the voice of their own “thoughts.”

Limbaugh fares poorly on TV.  When an audience can see him for what he is, a loud-mouthed, angry slob spouting crude insults and smirking and chuckling at his own half-witticisms, they turn him off.

But on the radio, as a voice inside his listeners’ heads, he’s not a hedonist and glutton and and hypocrite accusing the preternaturally mature, hard-working, and self-controlled Barack Obama of being what Rush himself obvious is, childish and lazy and self-indulgent.  (And I failed to mention the two-fer in there for Rush.  Not only did he get to call Obama boy, he more or less called him shiftless.  But he did both in a way that he can claim was not racist because, well, see what liberals said about George Bush.)  On the radio, he is a voice of reason pointing out what the dittoheads already know, that no black man is up to a job that ought to be held by a white man like them, no black man works as hard as white men like them, no black man deserves what they’ve earned (by right have been born white) and so the fact that there is a black man in the Oval Office is proof that something evil and nefarious is going on in America.

On the radio, Rush is not a fat middle-aged man on the brink of old age making fun of a sixty year old woman’s weight.  He’s the voice of reason again, assuring them that they’re right to hate Hillary Clinton, it’s ok for them to think ugly thoughts about her, because she is not a real woman or at least not the sort of woman they are expected to respect, let alone defer to.  She’s a ridiculous figure, more ridiculous for thinking and acting as if she can do a job that by right belongs to a man (Nevermind that the previous holder of that job was a woman, and a black woman at that.) and the fact that she is allowed to hold that job and that the “liberal” media is pretending she’s actually doing well in that job is again proof that something has gone seriously wrong with America.

On the radio, Rush is not an aging coward who dodged the draft during the Vietnam war denigrating the courage and patriotism of young men and women currently serving their country in a time of war, their lives on the line while Rush sits at his microphone and cheers on the wars in which they risked or will risk dying.  He’s the voice of reason telling the aging and softening men who had their chance to be heroes and missed it either because they were lucky enough to have missed a war or because they weren’t brave enough to enlist in the one that was available for them to fight in that if they were young again they would be real not phony soldiers, they would be the true heroes, they would have the right to be proud of themselves in a way they don’t happen to be, and because all that is true then they might as well be as proud as if it had happened, they might as well feel like real soldiers and heroes.

And the fact that people treat those phony soldiers as heroes or at least as worthy of respect and admiration instead of celebrating the virtuousness of the soldiers the dittoheads would be if they weren’t, well, who they are proves again that things are out of whack here.

The country is screwed up, and that explains why they aren’t rich, or employed, or happily married, or celebrated as heroes, or in charge, or even a little less miserable.  Rush tells them they are right to feel aggrieved, which is what they want to hear, and he offers them a deal.

As long as they keep listening to him, he will continue to tell them what they want to hear, he will let them indulge their sense of aggrievement and never say anything that will cause them to wonder if maybe they might bear some of the blame for the things that are wrong with their lives or cause them to think that maybe the things they feel are wrong aren’t in fact wrong. 

They need Rush to tell them all that.  You, of course, do not need me to tell you that about them.

What we all need, all of us, is to keep reminding ourselves that Ursula comes in all shapes, colors, and genders, there doesn’t have to actually be an Ursula---or a Rushula---for us to be like Ariel and hear only what we want to hear.

________________

An unpolitical reading of The Little Mermaid, movie and fairy tale:  Ariel’s obvious mistake is to blind herself to what Ursula really is.  But it doesn’t follow from that that her wanting to make that deal, her voice for a pair of legs and Eric’s love, is a mistake. 

In fact, she is right to make that deal because it is the only way for her to get to do not what she wants, but what she needs to do, which is to grow up, get herself out from under the sway of her too protective father’s trident, and go out into the world to make her own way as independent adult.  The marrying the prince and living happily ever part is just a device for ending the movie. 

Sebastian, her friend, is giving her bad advice.  He tells her to stay put and stay safe.  Her father could let her go.  He could use his magic to give her the legs she needs, which is merely a useful symbol for for what good parents are supposed to do for their children, teach them what they need to know to grow up into responsible and independent adults and then give them the freedom to go off and do that.  But he wants to keep her safe at home.  He wants her to remain his little girl. 

So Ariel has to take matters into her own hands.  It’s a devil’s bargain she makes with Ursula, but it’s only wrong because Ariel fails to see that it’s a devil she’s dealing with and plan accordingly.  Unlike the heroes and heroines of other  comedic variations on the Faust story, Ariel doesn’t know enough to make her Mephistopholes include an escape clause and to be on her guard against the devil’s double-dealing.

In Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, the sea-witch doesn’t double-cross the little mermaid.  Her true love lets her down.  He falls in love with someone else and forgets all about the little mermaid who dies (sort of) of a broken heart.  There’s more but that’s the gist. The lesson here is not at all about making deals you shouldn’t with the devil or wanting what you shouldn’t want.  It’s that it doesn’t matter how deeply, madly, truly you love nor does it matter what you do for the person you love---sometimes that person will break your heart and there will be no happily ever aftering with them.

A very un-Disneyesque lesson.

__________________

Comments

[PALGOLAK]

I am not convinced that Rush Limbaugh is worth the effort it must have taken to create this 2500 word posting.

[actor212]

Lance, you're missing a more subtle allusion:

Manchild In The Promised Land

[actor212]

But hey, that would be accusing Rush of being, you know, a white racist cracker...

[KC45s]

Yeah, as soon as I read "man-child," I thought of the Brown book. Rush's intern must've gotten an extra bag of cookies for coming up with a reference Rush hadn't used before. Of course, he still had to pick up Rush's laundry.

[Mike Schilling]

At the time she makes the deal with Ursula, all Ariel knows about Eric is that he's handsome. On the basis of that, she's willing to abandon everything she's ever know to be with him. I think this comes under the heading of "fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold".

[Nancy]

I think this comes under the heading of "fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold".

And of course this is traditionally only an acceptable option for males.

Few people recognize how unusual Disney's The Little Mermaid is, in the fact that she's probably the only female in all of children's entertainment who is driven entirely by sexual desire.

And Prince Eric is extremely hot, especially for a cartoon guy.

[Linkmeister]

You know, Lance, you risk annoying PZ Myers with that comparison of Limbaugh to a cephalopod. And the Pharyngulean wrath is legendary. Just ask Bill Donahue.

[Mike Schilling]

The Little Mermaid is, in the fact that she's probably the only female in all of children's entertainment who is driven entirely by sexual desire.

You have to wonder what wanting "legs" really means.

[actor212]

I think this comes under the heading of "fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold".

Shhhhhhhhhhhh! How do you think I ever get laid????

[Montana]

So Rusky gets punked because he does not fact check (Not the first time)? Wow, what a surprised.

Oh, and when contronted that he was punked, he defended himself by saying “we stand by the fabricated quote because we know Obama thinks it anyway” (Yeah good try to save face, what a loser)

After so many years of mis-labeling and mis-characterizing others he gets smacked down by the NFL “Not For Limbaugh”. Way to go NFL, great job!

[Dutch]

Lance, have you even SEEN Rush in the last ten years?

(Granted, actual exposure never stopped you from commentary on Fox News or O'Reilly or Beck, but...)

I really don't think you have. He's skinny as a meerkat. He looks great.

It would appear that the images you are seeing of rush are the Media Matters/Huffpo/AP pictures, still using the file photos of Fat Rush from 1988.

[actor212]

He's skinny as a meerkat

You must know some fucking fat meerkats, Dutch.