European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - July 29, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse Friday july 29, 1994 commentary the stars and stripes Page 17 on a Roll has liberals on the run Rush Limbaugh does no to need me to defend him. He docs Well enough speaking for himself on the 648 radio and 250 television stations that carry him and in the 6 million copies of his Best Selling books that Are in print. He has a network to millions of people who have for years wanted something or someone in the Media to reflect their views and values. Now that they be found him they Are rewarding Limbaugh with their allegiance which translates into big ratings and lots of Book sales. Cal Thomas in recent weeks his detractors have begun what appears to be a coordinated attempt to discredit him. Newspaper columns and paid newspaper ads allege a factual errors in some of his comments would that someone held the commercial networks accountable for their very real and numerous factual errors and unprofessional editorializing disguised As a a reporting the Liberal counterattack on Limbaugh is flawed in at least two ways. They Are lowering themselves to the very name calling they claim he engages in and by Labelling him a a a Jerk and a charlatan a they Are demeaning the Middle class people who arc his greatest fans and adding to the View that they Are out of touch with Middle America message if he a a. Jerk the big Media must think those who like him Are jerks too. From Reading some of what his critics write it seems Clear they have not listened to his show at least not Long enough to become familiar with its rhythms and the deeply held beliefs of those who Call and who truly love him. Yes that a right love him. The intensity of their loyalty and gratitude for expressing what they believe but can never communicate to a mass audience because the elite Media would Block or distort their voices is misunderstood by the left at its own peril Limbaugh a critics Are furious he has beaten them at their own game. They Are angry that he is exposing what they have tried to cover up namely fraud and hypocrisy in their own government and inside the education political and Media establishments. And they arc especially furious that he does not fit the conservative stereotype they have worked so Long and hard to create that of a three piece suit wearing White sock Clad Bible thumping Snake handling Book burning uneducated humourless Dunder head who drives a pickup truck with a gun rack and a a a they la get my gun when they pry it from my cold dead hands bumper sticker. In fact Limbaugh is intelligent incredibly fast on his feet and he is having a Good time while making gobs of Money. His roots Are midwestern. In be met his Mother and his brother who is an attorney on a trip to his Hometown Cape Girardeau to. They Are Salt of the Earth people with senses of humor the Type most hard working americans would identify with. They Arentt Flash just decent Folk who go to Church on sunday and think their government wants to replace god. As the most powerful Force in their lives. What most people done to realize is that Limbaugh is a humorist and satirist a with much More bite than will Rogers. He Hasni to used his invented word a of Chi nazi on the air in a year because he says he wanted to see How Many of his critics were actually listening. Not Many it appears As most who write or speak against him constantly mention the term which he has said was never intended to smear All women or even All feminists a just the Liny Core of the most Radical among them. In a Usa today column Limbaugh says he thinks jealousy is the reason most Liberal journalists enjoy attacking and misquoting him. That a part of it but there is a More profound reason the left knows it has lost the culture War and the idea War Over americans political economic and foreign policy direction. To keep from being held accountable it must create bogeymen bogey persons to shift the Public a attention from its failed record to the perceived on rare occasions Wheir a critic debates nightlife or some other forum Limbaugh blows them away in an Avalanche of facts and pugilistic rhetoric. It is an awesome sight to see something like watching Margaret Thatcher destroy her labor party adversaries during debates in the House of commons when she was prime minister. And so their Only Hope is to engage in mis quotation and misrepresentation. A Limbaugh should Challenge some of his most visible critics to a Public debate not about him but about the mess they have made of America. If they want to blast the generation that gave us Ozzie and Harriet let him Rii Ake the liberals defend Beavis and butt head. Keep it up. Rush. Their words can never Hurt you but your verbal Sticks and stones Are killing them. That a Why they Are reduced to calling you names in Lead of owning up to their responsibility As a indicted co conspirators in the wrecking of this once great Jia tips. A. A a a. C los Angeles Timos. A scope of tragedy overwhelms human hearts in the instant City of displacement and death that has sprung up almost overnight in Goma Zaire there Are now More rwandan refugees than there Are people living in Detroit. It this statistical comparison is an old journalistic trick to make the unimaginable comprehensible to make the other Side of the world seem like the town next door. But it clearly reveals itself As an empty device in the harsh Light of the disaster that has brought More than a million rwandans to a Border City in neighbouring Zaire that once bad a population of 150,000 people. And the disaster itself reveals the limits of individual ability to perceive the members of the human Community As neighbors friends fellow sufferers it reveals an empathy overload that has blunted the Edge of Public opinion perhaps for years to come. When Joelle Tanguy executive director of the medical Relief organization doctors without Borders talks about where its volunteers Are now deployed it sounds like a Roll Call of claims on our concern Bosnia Haiti so Many places where the . Government has considered intervention in recent months. From trying to Puzzle out the croats compassion Anna Quindlen serbs muslims and ate americans now turn their attention toward the huts and the Tutsi and the tribal warfare that led a monumental wave of people to pick up and move to encampments without latrines and clean water where thousands arc dying of cholera. Even Tanguy who has Given endless interviews on the Chance that they will somehow help finally says a but How Many times her voice dying in her Throat. What she Means is that the Volunteer doctors have been ricocheting from crisis to crisis. And the Public heart if there is such a thing has lost some of its elasticity. A people say a Well what Good has it done Ethiopia Somalia a it just keeps coming Back a a says sen. Nancy Kassebaum who sits on the subcommittee on african affairs. Americans can be compassionate and Een Crous people who hold Pancake breakfasts to pay for kidney transplants and help build new houses for victims of fire and flood. If it were possible As our mothers once suggested when we walked at Brussels sprouts to take our plenty personally to Goma the people there would be full. But compassion likes proximity and specificity the embodiment of an Issue in a person that attached when Betty Ford had breast cancer Rock Hudson aids. Would our understanding of the holocaust be quite the same if Anne Frank had not taken a Small plaid diary into hiding with her tragedy on a monumental perhaps historic scale As in Rwanda lends itself instead to depersonalization. So does the television coverage which is at once so immediate and so Distant. W to Ever imagined that we would be Able to watch As the Light of life passed from the eyes of a stranger thousands of Miles away who Ever imagined that we would be As close to a newly minted orphan tears a Swath of Patent leather on his Dusty face As to our own children who knew we would become so accustomed to the image of corpses in a mass grave that it would lose not Only the Power to Shock but the Power to move ? it is the individual that moves us. M Goma Raymond Bonner described one Small boy carrying the cloth wrapped Bun die that contained the body of his Little sister. Orphaned toddlers wander the Camps. Babies Wail Over their dying mothers. Tanguy says her doctors report seeing patients who die As they Are being examined. A if these people do not return to their Homes the crops will rot in the Field a she added a and we will Sec another Cycle of starvation. That is pretty much what we saw in a they Are diverting food from Sudan to the refugees a Kassebaum said. A but we know there arc children starving in the the United states is sending 33,000 tons of Grain and 20 million packets of dehydration kits to treat cholera. Diplomats Are working with the new rwandan government refugees who feared death because of factional fighting Are being urged to return Home. By the time they do there will be mass i Graves that hold perhaps thousands of bodies. And then somewhere else another great disaster writ Large on our television screens. Does each succeeding struggle enlarge our understanding of the essential tie of humanity or does it merely make us numb c new York times
