Democrats Under Siege

As Generalissimo El Busho’s polls drop, the Bushies are becoming desperate. Which means that to espouse left-of-center politics these days is a dangerous business.

People like me, Michael Moore, Al Franken and Bill Maher have been targeted by right-wing hate groups and their repugnant anonymous warblogger allies. Their goal is to deny us an income and a voice by deluging our employers with hate email–99% of it from people who don’t actually read the publications in which we appear. Because the right can’t win the battle of ideas, they’re forced to resort to the next best thing: silencing their opponents.

Make no mistake: it’s neo-McCarthyism, and it’s been in full swing since 9/11.

There is, however, something that you can do.

When you see a cartoon or movie or column or other form of expression that you agree with, don’t just smile and turn the page. Send an email or, better yet, a real letter to the editor. Thank them for supporting work you enjoy and/or consider important, and ask your friends to do the same. If you have a website or liberal-minded blog, post a link so other likeminded souls can do the same. And, of course, buy their books. Among cartoonists, readers are notorious for requesting cartoon collections that they don’t support by purchasing.

I’m still getting emails from readers of New York Times Digital and MSNBC.com asking where my cartoons went. If these fans and others like them had written to say they liked my stuff when it was still around, they probably wouldn’t have to ask now.

The Guardian UK on Ted Rall

The venerable UK Guardian, the paper that keeps many Americans sane and informed during the Bush occupation, has an article about yours truly in today’s edition.

‘HUMOUR IS HIS OFFENSIVE WEAPON’

He mocked 9/11 widows and a dead president. But Ted Rall is one of the few prepared to take on the US right

by John Sutherland

It’s harder to offend people than it used to be. Young Stephen Fingleton, an undergraduate at UCL, uses the word “fuck” 77 times in a 400-word farewell column (headlined “Fuck You”) in the London Student newspaper and raises barely a “What the heck?” Time was Fingleton would have been rusticated. Or at least noticed.

Top of the list among America’s most offensive is Ted Rall. If Doonesbury and Michael Moore are the cutting edge of American political comedy, Rall is its bludgeon. He believes liberals should reclaim America from the rightist-Christianists. Humour is his offensive weapon.

He campaigns on many fronts. He’s an author, a print journalist, a tireless blogger and – most effectively – a cartoonist. Throughout the 1990s he built up a following as a “guerrilla artist” among the young and mad-as-hell in New York. He won awards and published a graphic novel, The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done.

Hey, I’m flattered. But I’ve actually published two more graphic novels, MY WAR WITH BRIAN and the Orwell parody 2024. And TO AFGHANISTAN AND BACK, which contains a 50-page graphic-novel-form comic. Back to the Guardian…

There are various schools of thought about the worst thing Rall has done. Some would say his 2002 cartoon satirising the 9/11 widows (very sacred cows) as money-grubbing harpies; others might nominate his comic strip lampooning Pat Tillman, NFL football star turned US Ranger, as a “sap”. Tillman was no national hero, Rall jeered, but a “cog in a low-rent occupation army”. He deserved to die by friendly fire. The Tillman strip attracted 6,000 emails and enough death threats to make Rall wholly uninsurable.

Ted again. Hey, I never said Tillman deserved to die. And I don’t feel that way, either. I do think he was stupid, and possibly ill-intentioned, and I’ve said so. The uninsurable thing is pretty funny, though.

Most, however, would agree that the acme of Rallist offensiveness was his comment last week that Ronald Reagan (the “Proto-Bush”) was char-broiling in the flames of hell and “turning crispy brown right now”: Kentucky Fried President. It was accompanied by a cartoon showing an Alzheimery Gipper in the underworld.

Maybe he’s right, but if so it’s a little weird. Surely it should be more offensive to satirize Tillman than Reagan. Reagan, after all, was the devil incarnate…and the president! No president is beloved by all.

Rall’s Reagan was not the “national treasure” that President Bush eulogised, but the scourge of America’s poor; the man who abolished student aid and let Aids rip; the purveyor of “quack economics” (ie, tax cuts for his buddies); the despoiler of national parks, etc. In short, to borrow a proto-Bushism, Reagan was downright evil. “If there is a hell, this guy is in it,” Rall declared on the day Margaret Thatcher paid her respects before the flag-draped coffin. “And just how old is that nasty old crone?” mused Rall.

It was, however, the cartoon and “turning crispy brown” that really got through to middle America. There were so many emailed protests that his website (Tedrall.com) crashed for 24 hours after the remark and the offending cartoon were posted on the US website Drudge Report.

Typical was “Doug” of West Virginia: “You are a cocksucker. Go back to the USSR, that failed like you. Go to France, cocksucker. Do everyone some good and move down to Cuba. Thank you. Jerkweed Burn In Hell!!!!” Another ill-wisher wrote: “Fuck you Dickweed. I hope the maggots won’t even eat your dead carcass.”

It’s pretty damned awesome that a mainstream British newspaper can print such vulgarities rather than the infantile f*** y** you see in our papers.

“Sexuality”, Rall notes, is an obsessive theme among his critics. “I could tell by the way you talk,” wrote one US army veteran, having seen Rall on TV, “that you’ve consumed much sperm, and are addicted to homosexuality.” Rall is (I believe) straight, anti-abortion, and was pro-impeachment for Clinton.

The last time America was embroiled in a divisive war, protest mobilised in the campuses and in papers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. Today the universities are dormant and the press too fearful about circulation to raise its voice above a dissenting murmur. Politicians keep their heads down and salute the flag – it’s election year.

Only the tasteless comedians (Al Franken, Michael Moore, Bill Maher, Rall) and the “leftwing Hollywood kooks” (Barbra Streisand, Tim Robbins, Martin Sheen) are prepared to take on what they perceive as the Great Rightwing Hegemony. It’s a depressing spectacle: intransigent prejudice (Fox News) versus intransigent protest (Fahrenheit 9/11). You want reasoned debate? “Go to France, cocksucker.”

Overall, a great piece. (Although an assertion that I’m “anti-abortion” is incorrect. My stance on abortion is nuanced; I’m 100% pro-choice while acknowledging that life begins at conception. I believe that women have the right to murder their unborn babies, in other words, and that it’s a right that should be used as sparingly as possible–except in the case of pregnant teens, for whom it should be the first choive.) Does Britain offer political asylum?

Many of the loons who send me hate mail seem obsessed with gay sex. They call me a cocksucker, sperm drinker, asspony, etc.

Interestingly, the Defense Department appears to share their interests. In a New York Times piece that drew remarkably little attention, it seems evident that the Abu Ghraib types have some serious gay sex issues themselves:

  SEXUAL HUMILIATION

Forced Nudity of Iraqi Prisoners Is Seen as a Pervasive Pattern, Not Isolated Incidents

By KATE ZERNIKE and DAVID ROHDE

Published: June 8, 2004

In the weeks since photographs of naked detainees set off the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, military officials have portrayed the sexual humiliation captured in the images as the isolated acts of a rogue night shift.

But forced nudity of prisoners was pervasive in the military intelligence unit of Abu Ghraib, so much so that soldiers later said they had not seen “the whole nudity thing,” as one captain called it, as abusive or out of the ordinary.

While there have been reports of forced nakedness at detention facilities in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the practice was apparently far more aggressive at Abu Ghraib, according to interviews, reports from human rights groups and sworn statements from detainees and soldiers. The detainees said leaving prisoners naked started as far back as last July, three months before the seven soldiers now charged and their military police company arrived at the prison. It bred a culture, some soldiers say, where the abuse captured on film could happen.

Detainees were paraded naked past other prisoners and guards; some were ordered to do jumping jacks and sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the nude, according to a several witnesses. Also, a father and his grown son were stripped, then forced to stand and stare at each other. The International Committee of the Red Cross, visiting in October, found prisoners left naked in their cells for days, modestly trying to shield themselves behind cardboard from meals-ready-to-eat boxes.

It is not clear how the practice emerged and, if it was official policy, exactly who authorized it. Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the military intelligence officer in charge of interrogations at the prison, told Army investigators that detainees might be stripped and shackled for questioning, but not without “good reason.” When Red Cross monitors expressed alarm about prisoners being left in their cells or forced to move about naked, they said military intelligence officials “confirmed that it was part of the military intelligence process.”

“It was not uncommon to see people without clothing,” Capt. Donald J. Reese, the warden of the tier where the worst abuses occurred, told investigators in a sworn statement in January. “I only saw males. I was told the `whole nudity thing’ was an interrogation procedure used by military intelligence, and never thought much of it.”

An analyst from the 205th Military Intelligence Battalion, who asked not to be identified for fear of being punished for speaking out, said: “If you walked down through the wing of the prison where they were being held, they would have them strip down naked. Sometimes they would stand on boxes and would hold their arms out. That happened almost every night — having them naked. I wouldn’t say it’s abuse. It’s definitely degrading to them.”

Soldiers said at least one civilian interrogator, Steven Stefanowicz, had been so alarmed by the use of nudity that he reported a military intelligence interrogator after she made a detainee walk naked down a cellblock to humiliate him. His lawyer said Mr. Stefanowicz, who an Army report said might have been “directly or indirectly” responsible for abuses, had not thought stripping detainees was an appropriate interrogation technique, and had worried that doing so would incite more unrest at a time when guards were fending off rioters with live bullets.

Nudity is considered particularly shameful in Muslim culture, a violation of religious principles. While nudity as a disciplinary or coercive tool may be especially objectionable to Muslims, they are hardly the only victims of the practice. Soldiers in Nazi Germany paraded naked prisoners in daylight, and human rights groups have documented the use of nudity during conflicts in Egypt, Chile and Turkey, and in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Central Intelligence Agency training manuals from the 1960’s and 1980’s taught the stripping of prisoners as an interrogation tool. Nudity and sexual humiliation have also been reported in American prisons where a number of guards at Abu Ghraib worked in their civilian lives.

Complaints about sexual humiliation have also emerged in Afghanistan. Seven Afghan men who had been held at the main detention center in Bagram, where the deaths of two detainees and accusations of abuse are now under investigation, said in recent interviews that during various periods from December 2002 to April 2004, they had been subjected to repeated rectal exams, and forced to change clothes, shower and go to the bathroom in front of female soldiers.

“I’m 50 years old, and no one has ever taken my clothes,” said Abdullah Khan Sahak, who was released from American custody on April 19 and complained that he was photographed nude in Afghanistan. “It was a very hard moment for me. It was death for me.”

Zakim Shah, a 20-year-old farmer, and Parkhudin, a 26-year-old farmer and former soldier who, like many Afghans, has only one name, said female soldiers had watched groups of male prisoners take showers at Bagram and undergo rectal exams.

“We don’t know if it’s medical or if they were very proud of themselves,” Mr. Shah said. “But if it was medical, why were they taking our clothes off in front of the women? We are Afghans, not Americans.”

On two or three occasions, the two men said, the women commented to one another about the size of prisoners’ penises. “They were laughing a lot,” Parkhudin said, adding that the women taunted prisoners during showers, saying, “You’re my dog.”

Three other prisoners reported being questioned while naked at an American firebase in the city of Gardez in 2003. And at Camp Rhino, John Walker Lindh, the American now serving a 20-year sentence for aiding the Taliban, was stripped and bound with duct tape to a stretcher for two days, according to the statement of fact in his plea-bargain agreement.

At Guantánamo Bay, where some prisoners from Afghanistan were taken, a few British detainees said forced nudity had occurred. One of them, Tarek Dergoul, said after his release that some detainees had been stripped of their clothing, which would then be returned piece by piece in exchange for good behavior.

But Lt. Col. Leon H. Sumpter, a spokesman for the military joint task force that runs the detention center, said in a recent interview that nudity had never occurred in connection with interrogation or discipline and had not been approved.

A military official who served at Guantánamo said that after a wave of suicide attempts by prisoners in late 2002 and early 2003, the military police guards did take away clothing from some detainees who were considered suicide risks, out of concern that they might rip up their garments to make nooses.

In its visits to detention centers and prisons in Iraq, the Red Cross singled out the military intelligence section at Abu Ghraib for using public nudity in a “systematic” pattern of maltreatment. By contrast, the committee said it had heard no complaints of “physical ill treatment” at Camp Bucca, another large detention center.

A list of interrogation techniques posted at Abu Ghraib in September, indicating which were acceptable and which needed special authorization, makes no mention of leaving detainees naked. A senior military officer said, “There was no interrogation authority that authorized the removal of all clothing from a detainee.”

But detainees who made sworn statements after the prison abuse scandal broke all mentioned having been left naked, some for days. The practice goes back at least as far as July 10, when, according to his statement, a detainee named Amjed Isail Waleed was left unclothed in a dark room for five days. Another detainee, Ameen Saeed al-Sheik, said he was stripped on Oct. 7, a week before the arrival of the 372nd Military Police Company, the unit where soldiers are now charged with abuse.

By Oct. 20, forced nudity was such accepted practice that an incident report written by two of the soldiers now charged said an inmate in the cell where prisoners were held for interrogation had been ordered “stripped in his cell for six (6) days” for apparently whittling a toothbrush into what a soldier believed was a knife.

In late October, Red Cross monitors were so alarmed by the number of nude detainees that they halted their visit and demanded an immediate explanation.

“The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was `part of the process,’ ” the Red Cross wrote in a report in February.

In November, Specialist Luciana Spencer of the 66th Military Intelligence Group ordered a detainee stripped and handcuffed behind his back during his interrogation, then paraded him outdoors in the cold past other detainees to his cell.

“I remember we said, `Do you really have to walk him out naked?’ ” said the intelligence analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “And they said, `Yeah, yeah, we have to embarrass him.’ “

Mr. Stefanowicz reported the incident, and Specialist Spencer was moved out of the interrogation unit. Sometime around December, the nudity seemed to stop, according to several soldiers. Captain Reese, the tier warden, credited the Red Cross.

“They were concerned with the amount of nudity, and the area was cold and damp,” he said in his statement to investigators on Jan. 18. “The detainees did not have appropriate clothing and bedding. The second visit occurred two weeks ago, and things were much better. The nudity has stopped, and they seemed happy with what they saw.”

jreyn@charter.net sends me this hilarious email, entitled “More Liberal Lies”:

I read the piece on financial aid during the Reagan years, and I had to laugh. I was a freshman in college in 1979 and took out many student

loans. Most of the loans I received were at 5 or 9% interest at a time when the prime rate was approximately 17% thanks to Jimmy Carter.

They also were paid back ahead of schedule. I never had a problem or was denied any of these loans.

Why do you make up things that are obviously untrue? Keep up the good work, you are a walking talking billboard for the re-election of George Bush!!

Thank you.

JR

The Reagan education budget cuts went into effect on October 1, 1981. They hit schools for the spring 1982 semester. Which means that JR would only have been subject to one of his eight semesters–his last one–before graduating in May 1982.

Who’s telling lies now? The scary thing is that JR actually gave credit to Reagan for Jimmy Carter’s low-interest student loans.

Oh, and if Bush wins this fall: it won’t be re-election. You have to win once to be re-elected.

Randi Rhodes Slams Hannity

Yesterday Air America’s Randi Rhodes–as readers know, she’s my favorite Air America host–held forth on the Reagan “controversy” and the way Sean Hannity treated me on his radio show.

Check out www.randirhodesarchives.com, click on the 2nd half of June 9th.

What About His Family?

One emailer asks:

Mr. Rall, you have the right to say anything that you want. Mr. Reagan is dead. But Mrs. Reagan is alive and can be hurt by what you say. She is suffering right now and having to go through the funeral of her husband. I know, I’ve been there, done that. Couldn’t you wait until after the funeral before beginning your rant?

First of all, everyone has family. When Fidel Castro dies, his relatives will be sad, but I doubt that’ll cause Republican commentators to lay off. (And yes, I’m comparing Reagan to Fidel–even though Castro isn’t quite as bad as Reagan.) Nor should it.

Second, the only time America will talk about Reagan’s legacy is now. In two weeks, no one’ll care. That’s why we’re talking about this now. On the other hand, if editors opened their pages to old topics, that would change.

Finally, liberals would lay off Reagan if conservatives weren’t laying it on so thick. Suggesting that RR belongs on Mt. Rushmore, trying to evict Alexander Hamilton from the $10 bill for Ronnie, calling him one of the best presidents ever, giving him credit for ending the Cold War–it’s all so over the top, so absurd, so exagerrated that someone has to point out the obvious: it ain’t so.

Teddy, Are You Queer?

Well? Am I?

That’s what a lot of Republicans want to know. My hate mailers love dimestore psychology. Maybe I was beaten up as a kid–that’s why I dislike Reagan and Bush. (Though, it must be said, I was never a male cheerleader.) Why’d I bring up the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, during which Republicans suggested that detention camps were the best solution…as opposed to say, more funding for research? Could I be…gay?

If I am gay, if I love to partake of sins of the flesh with tight, rippled he-men, then it’s none of anybody’s Goddamned business.

If I am straight, I shouldn’t declare that either. Being gay isn’t bad and being called gay isn’t an insult. Progressive straights who point to their heterosexuality help propagate homophobia.

Rush Declares Jihad On Your Humble Narrator!

I don’t understand why so few of my fellow Democrats are afraid to say in public what they say in private, over beers with their friends. And I can’t imagine how anyone, even hard-right Reaganite Christianists, can find it surprising or confusing that not everybody is convulsing with grief now that the guy has finally admitted, 20 years late, that he’s dead.

After all, millions of Americans became homeless because of his budget cuts of psychiatric facilities. Millions more lost their jobs because he bankrupted the federal treasury. And half a million people died of AIDS because he refused to fund research into the disease. Millons of college students were forced to drop out of school because of him, and millions of other Americans earned, and still earn, less because of his union busting and corporate welfare. Surely conservatives must recognize that those people–most people–might still hold a grudge, what with the death and maiming and poverty and all.

Alas not. For we must all kneel at the casket of a man who didn’t give a shit about his own children, much less the citizenry at large.

Well, not me, anyway. And for that unpardonable sin, right-wing talk radio king Rush Limbaugh lambasted me on his nationally syndicated radio show yesterday. It should be pointed out, by the way, that this cowardly drug-addled blowhard didn’t dare go toe to toe with me on his program to discuss Reagan.

Some lowlights follow:

RUSH: We go to Raleigh, North Carolina. Hello, Wendy, nice to have you with us.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. I don’t know that I can even get through this. I loved Reagan so much, and for four days I have just really been heartbroken, but then when I heard what Ted Rall wrote about Reagan and hoping that he was turning a crispy brown right now because of his policies in office. These things need to be told, Rush, and I’m so glad you’re going to tell them because these people are the ones that are supporting the Democrats, they’re supporting the liberals and this is the hate that they have, and it has nothing to do with reality, it has nothing to do with who the president was at that time. He was a great man.

OK, so the caller is upset Reagan’s dead. Fine. But “heartbroken”? For God’s sake, woman, the dude’s been in a vegetative state since today’s teenagers were born! You might have seen this tragedy coming.

RUSH: You did great, Wendy.

CALLER: I’m sorry.

RUSH: No, no, no, no, this is good. Ted Rall did write some things, I’m sure many of you have heard about it. He did say that he was sure or he hoped that Reagan was turning a crispy brown, meaning he’s burning in hell for what he did to people. You know, Wendy, the best thing I can say to you at this time of your grief and your pain is probably to tell you how Reagan would react to this.

CALLER: He would have ignored it.

RUSH: He would have ignored it and he would have laughed about it, and he would have taken it as a measure of his success.

On this point Rush and I agree.

CALLER: But he can’t defend himself so, Rush, you have to.

RUSH: Well, but you know, we were just discussing this in the break. Ronald Reagan was bigger than the media in life, he’s bigger than the media in death, and he’s certainly, Wendy, bigger than this little leprechaun, Ted Rall. This is simply Ted Rall trying to get some light shining on himself. This is one of the reasons why I have a conundrum here about talking about these people. All he’s trying to do is get noticed, all he’s trying to do is bask in some of the light that naturally shines on Ronald Reagan.

Leprechaun? But I’m not even Irish!

CALLER: But he also said those horrible things about Pat Tillman. People just really need to see the hate speech that comes out of that side.

RUSH: I think more and more people are. The media, you know, there’s no condemnation of this guy.

CALLER: There isn’t.

RUSH: You know, I say one little joke, one little thing they take out of context about the Abu prison photos, and it’s news for two weeks, right?

Um, nice joke, Rush. The dude called the murder of at least 25 Iraqi prisoners, and the sexual humiliation and beatings of hundreds more, akin to a “Skull and Bones” frat prank. One little thing, indeed.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: This guy, there’s no condemnation of him. In fact, there are people trying to understand what he’s doing. You must understand from where he’s coming, and you must understand that, well, this is a free speech era, and he’s in the media, and he can say whatever he wants, and it would be terrible to shut him down, don’t you think? Those are the reactions, because the thing is there are people who are glad he’s saying it. There are people on his side of the aisle happy he’s saying it, so that they don’t have to. And the more outrageous it is, the more coverage it gets, the more successful they think it’s going to be. It’s just the opposite, Wendy. These people are nailing themselves in their own coffins is what’s happening here. This is not how you build a movement. You do not build a movement on hate. You don’t build loyalty and trust and expand your base of influence with this kind of emotion and rhetoric, epitomized by Ted Rall. And so when I first saw it, I’ve gotten so accustomed to these people saying things, I think they’re in a contest now to see who can out outrage the other on the left. I look at this stuff, and I must tell you that a smile comes to my face when I see it, there’s some anger in there, but ultimately I end up smiling because you have to know, you’ve lived your life, you probably haven’t known anybody personally like this, have you?

RUSH LIMBAUGH says you don’t build a movement on hate? RUSH LIMBAUGH? Argggghhhhhh!

(snip)

RUSH: Well, you’re very kind. You’re very kind. I appreciate it. I’m going to play these two sound bites. And I should point out this Ted Rall guy is a cartoonist and his work appears in the New York Times now and then. His work appears in major newspapers. Major leftist newspapers don’t have a problem with this guy. I think the Tillman cartoon did get yanked by the syndicator or a couple papers. Let’s set the stage. Last night on Hannity & Colmes, Ted Rall, and Colmes, a rare liberal with some class stood up to Rall. He said, “I have problems with my fellow liberals who can’t get over the election of 2000. They should be focusing on winning 2004, but you, by doing this you make those on my side look bad by showing no grace, no compassion, no sense of humanity for a man who served this country, whether or not you agree with the things he stood for.”

Yep. Alan Colmes, Sean Hannity’s pet faux liberal–whom I have NEVER seen espouse a genuine, strident liberal position–is a “rare liberal with some class.” If that’s class, call me déclassé.

RALL: Well, I have more sympathy for the 290 million Americans who are living worse lives under a worse economy, being paid less with worse health care, with more homelessness, with more poverty than there would have been had Ronald Reagan never become president. So for me, you’re right, I don’t have that much sympathy for him.

RUSH: Folks, seriously, what am I supposed to do with this? This is so asinine that it is beneath all of our dignity to even set it straight. But I know some of you want, okay, homelessness, health care, wages, economy, 290 million Americans living worse today because of Reagan. What is sad about this is that such an imbecile and such an ignoramus ends up as a prominent cartoonist in major newspapers. This guy could not pass a basic civics test. This guy could not pass a recent American history test. This guy could not get a college diploma today. He couldn’t get a high school diploma with what his view of history is.

Columbia University, Rush. Class of 1991. Major: history. With honors. Sorry, try again. Thanks for playing.

Do we need to go back and retrace what this country was like during the seventies, particularly the last four years of the seventies under Jimmy Carter? Do we need to go back and trace the misery index? Do we need to go back and trace the double-digit inflation, the double-digit unemployment, the double-digit interest rates?

I hate to steal from the estimable Al Franken here, but here are more Limbaughian lies. Under Jimmy Carter, suffering from a post-Vietnam War deficit hangover, unemployment was less than it was under Ronald Reagan. And wages increased faster than inflation. The average American did much better under Carter–and a hell of a lot better under Clinton–than Reagan, who presided over a stunning increase in the gap between rich and poor.

Do we need to go back and trace all that? Do we need to look at what the economy is doing today, what it did during the nineties, all since the Reagan revolution of the eighties? To say that this economy and the people of this country are in worse shape today than they were in the seventies or any time period is simply — I don’t have the word. It’s not the breathtaking, it’s not stupid, it’s not idiotic, it’s just… you simply have a bomb thrower here who is purposely trying to —

Set things straight? Like when Sean Hannity asserted on his radio show that we bombed Libya to get even for the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103–years before it happened?

(snip)

RUSH: Look, folks, if we’re going to do this, we’ve got to keep something in mind here. We need to be real careful that we do not slip into judging our hero, Ronald Reagan, based on the liberal agenda. We’re going to judge Reagan based on our values and our principles which we share with the vast majority of the American people.

This is one of the things that just instinctively I said, “Don’t give these people any credit because I don’t want to appear defensive.” I don’t want to appear reactionary. I don’t want to sit here and have to spend any time defending this man. He doesn’t need to be defended. These are the people that need to somehow be able to defend themselves. These wackos with these charges, it is silly to take Ted Rall seriously, it’s silly to give him any serious amount of time at all, in my book. It’s not worth it. It’s not even substantive. If you’re going to talk about AIDS, what did Bill Clinton do about AIDS when he was in office? He did next to nothing. All he did was have an AIDS czar, and the AIDS czars were unhappy, and he went to a couple of human rights meetings with Anne Heche and what’s her face, Ellen DeGeneres, and they thought, “He loves us.” He didn’t do anything about AIDS.

You know who’s done the most about AIDS of American presidents? I’ll give you one name: George W. Bush. George W. Bush has spent more money, offered more money, suggested more money and more seriousness about AIDS than any American president. And who do they hate? They hate George W. Bush.

Um, it’s been well documented that Bush moved the AIDS money for Africa from other AIDS initiatives. Net increase: zero. That’s why we hate Bush: because he’s a liar. All politicians are, but Bush takes the cake.

This is not about money; it’s not about fixing the problem. It’s they want a president who’s going to mouth their agenda. I’m talking about the whole left. If they don’t get a president that mouths their agenda, they’re going to hate the guy. This is all a result of their having had power, unchallenged, for over 40 or 50 years and they don’t anymore. This is all positive signs.

Actually, that’s untrue. We didn’t hate Bush’s father. He was misguided, clueless, did some evil stuff, but no more than, say, Clinton. And you have to love the fact that Bush 41 was willing to publicly lambaste (via a surrogate) Bush 43’s misguided war against Iraq. Nah, dad’s OK. Relatively.

To see people crack up like this, to see people implode like this, to see people make abject fools of themselves like this, I do not want to sit here and have to defend Ronald Reagan or define Ronald Reagan in terms that the left sets forth as their agenda. Because he didn’t do that. He didn’t care what they thought. He didn’t bother reacting to them, he did what was in his heart and what was in his mind and what he knew was right, and he let them cry over spilt milk and they’re still crying over it.

What the right calls implosion, other people call telling it like it is. And millions of Americans who remember the Reagan years don’t seem to have any trouble with it.

Media Appearances for Thursday, June 10

I’ll be on “Unfiltered” with Chuck D on Air America tomorrow morning, from around 11:20 am to 11:50 am East Coast time to discuss my new book “Wake Up, You’re Liberal.” Check local listings to see whether there’s an Air America affiliate near you, or you can livestream it through their website.

Also, I’ll be on Alan Colmes’ radio show tomorrow night, talking about Ronald Reagan.