I began listening to Limbaugh while a grad student in modern European history at U.Va. (Virginia, not Vienna) in the early 1990s, and might have been mistaken quite easily, on the ideological level at least, at as a prime constituent within his burgeoning demographic: a decade of full immersion in Austrian economics in particular and libertarian thought in general put me well at odds with mainstream liberalism as filtered through the entertainment industry (aka the “media”) and the political-industrial complex.

Limbaugh, from the earliest days of his AM-band insurgency, soon proved in my eyes a case study, endemic on the “right”, of the indiscriminate and overstretched application, unto radically diminishing returns (Austrian economics rides again), of an insight useful if limited: that the default social and political outlook within our cultural and educational industries tends toward a mild, government-expanding center-left Democratic “liberalism” - though most of the work produced, it must be said, is relatively apolitical within a host of nonpoliticized disciplines and entertainments.

Fair enough; but the conspiratorial way in which this limited insight became a mighty *idee fixe* splashing well over any dams once visible within the Limblaughviate streams soon revealed itself as I began a decade’s work as a bookseller within the Borders fold and ran smack into a prime refutation of the daily “line” broadcast to shock troops from the precincts of Grim Freeper Madness to the hop-head pages of the WALL STREET URINAL; it is a commonplace of general-press criticism that a good test of an information outlet is the accuracy and balance with which that source covers your own field of expertise, which, if shown to be reflexively off-base within, makes the surrounding whole much more suspect after such core sampling.

My case in point: Limbaugh, to this day, has maintained, on-air and with the deadest of pans, that the supposedly snooty left-liberal artsy types staffing the big mainstream bookstores enact by habit the practice of hiding from their customers the works of popular conservative authors in general, and of his and his culture-warrior trenchmates in particular.

There’s only one thing standing in the way of that thesis: the truth. Though the revelation of my own earlier contributions as a literary essayist (1985-6) to - sacre bleu! - the dreaded NATIONAL REVIEW raised the occasional flash of liberal-arty disdain among a smattering of my bookstore colleagues, and the (very) occasional breakroom bitching upon the topical politics of the day tended to break disproportionately toward the side harboring First Lady Shrillary Clinton and VP Hal Bore - such partisan leanings off the sales floor never - I repeat: never - affected our
drive as a self-interested, profit-seeking, job-preserving enterprise in proverbially giving the public what it wanted, from great stacks of Limbaugh inches from the registers to the latest Gingrichite pamphlets printed and shipped virtually overnight to cash in on the 1994 “Contract with America” GOP insurgency.

And my three Borders stores were within the very heart of what imbeciles persist in calling “blue state” America, two within the Beltway (C-SPAN chief Brian Lamb was a favorite customer) and one in South Portland, Maine. Across eight full-time years and a quarter-million interactions with individual customers, and chapter-and-verse immersion in the doctrinal intricacies of the corporate culture throughout, the *only* obstacles placed between the “politically-incorrect” authors and their paying walk-in customers issued not from snobbishly clueless staffers enforcing an arrogant leftist commissariat (they’d have been fired had they not wised up) - but from the usual demand-outstrips-supply happenstance afflicting all authors, left, right, and who-gives-a…

Hats off to you, Rush, for your “self-made” financial success, but in the cultural sphere, to many of us, you’re no less corrosive than the “self-made” Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt - and as likely to find yourself in civilised company…

Every once-sympathetic listener to the “EIB” network has his own hey-waittaminnit memory of this “Jackass” *avant la lettre* - for my mother, it was Limbaugh’s clueless disdain toward children, and his ridiculing of the wardrobe of the father of Elian Gonzalez (remember him?), part of the larger lockstep-”conservative” playbook over the episode, which found (independently) conservative law professor Kenneth Anderson tearing the hide off his supposed confreres in a masteful essay in The Times Literary Supplement:

http://www.wcl.american.edu/faculty/anderson/docs/great_betrayal.pdf

Well, I must be off, time to get my marching orders, don’cha know - gotta see what Hugh and the Powerline boys have to say about last hour’s “news” headlines, then it’s a quick bathroom break and off to Little Seen Footfalls and Insteadipunnedit, then the closed-circuit-video version of THE WEAKLY STAMMERED at 6 on the Pop Snooze Channel, then a nap before LIFE OF O’RILEY FAXED HER at 8, then CAN A’ TEA AND HOLMES (9pm FNC: The houndstooothed Baker Street sleuth discusses cocaine legalization with William Bennett, author of DELIVER US FROM THE SEVEN-PERCENT SOLUTION, while his sidekick, a tin of Earl Grey, sits in desiccated and compact silence in failing to get a word in edgewise), SCARRED BROW COUNTRY, and Gretel Hanselsteren…

Please pardon my exsufflicate ranting — my own blog has completely crashed for the night, and I needed someplace to unload. Thanks for listening.

That’s a great point about the difference between Malkin and Limbaugh. People who have children are viscerally, instinctively more “conservative” when it comes to things like this than people who don’t. I find Foley’s actions horrifying and disgusting, because that’s what they are, but I am sure that parents must respond even more powerfully. For parents, the threat represented by the Mark Foleys of the world takes on immediate, personal significance; for everyone else, it is creepy and appalling, but it does not carry quite the same weight.

Of course the Democrats are exploiting the scandal, as any opposing party would when its enemies are thrown into chaos, but all of this mock outrage about this “politicisation” coming from the GOP is deplorable. It is a perfect example of reflexive partisan blindness. The line seems to be, “So what if our guys knew about this months ago? They opposed pederasty before they enabled it! You were just lying in wait to spring the trap!” Except, of course, that there would no trap to spring if the GOP leadership had acted as men would and kicked Foley to the curb.

Malkin is definitely right about one thing: the GOP elites are beyond hope.

I’ve been absorbing as much commentary on the ‘net and radio about the Foley mess as I can stand today.

What I am hearing from some conservatives inclined to pooh-pooh Foley’s behavior and carry on about Barney Frank instead does not sit well with me. You can’t possibly read Foley’s communications with minors that have been disclosed so far–including his attempts to rendezvous with one–and dismiss them as merely “naughty e-mails.” Yet, that’s how White House press secretary Tony Snow described some of them this morning. Though he admitted to being too “glib” and “clarified” those remarks with tougher words this afternoon, the damage has been done. Fair or not, it makes the White House look flippant about sexual predation. Parents of all political persuasions are not going to be receptive to that.

And this:

There is a time and place for attacking the Dems and the MSM. Now is not that time. Parents need assurance that their kids are safe on Capitol Hill. If Beltway GOP elites can’t understand this, they are beyond hope.

It’s probably not a coincidence that Rush is childless and Michelle isn’t.

Kleinhelder’s right: “We are no longer led by men.”