Rush Limbaugh’s Racism

Rush Limbaugh has a huge audience, but across the broad spectrum of people, he’s a pretty unpopular guy. Specifically, his radio show has about 15 million listeners a week, which is the largest talk-radio audience in the United States. However, in opinion surveys, only 33% of Americans have a favorable view of him. And even 15 million listeners is still less than 5% of the American population.

Anyway, here’s my point. Limbaugh had this to say about the healthcare bill(s):

“The rich are going to stop getting all the good stuff, we’re gonna take — this is income redistribution, this is returning the nation’s wealth to its quote-unquote rightful owners,” he said yesterday in discussing the reform effort. “This is a civil rights bill. This is reparations, whatever you want to call it.”

So there you have it. President Obama (who, unrelatedly of course, is black) supports healthcare reform as a way to take money from rich white people and give it to blacks as reparations for slavery.

This is a serious point of view folks – Rush isn’t some crazy nut on a soapbox, no, he’s a controversial but otherwise respectable political commentator who is perfectly welcome among our political and journalistic elite. The Bush administration elders met one-on-one with this guy to discuss policy.

Wow.