Clov said:
I'm no Limbaugh fan, but trotting out one tear year old quote for the millionth time is becoming tiresome. It's like saying that me being pissed about my iPod being stolen is hypocritical, because I took $20 from my dad's wallet when I was 13.
(Don't worry, guys, I got the iPod back. I love you, iPod. Let us never part again. )
Its not one quote, what he did was not remotely akin to stealing $20 from your dad and you've reversed the timeline. It's dozens of quotes, consistently, that shaped public opinion and policy over a decade and a half. He was ranting about Joe Fernandez's admitted drug use thirty years ago while he himself was addicted to oxycontin. Now Mr. Lock up the Scumbags and Throw away the Key is all about diversionary sentences. For him. Fuck him.
I've never seen any quotes from him about drugs but that 1995 one. Maybe they're out there, but I've never seen them.
Have you tried Google? There are dozens from '93 to '03 alone, the latter is when his comments about Fernandez came up. He was banging the drum right up until they busted his housekeeper.
FearTheReaper said:
Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. ... And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.
Not to mention that you've omitted relevant parts of that quote to suit your ends. The full quote has a very different message:
"There's nothing good about drug use. We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.
While it's not quite the sensitive drug policy most people here would like, it's not the "Anyone who touches drugs should be put in jail for life" quote it's been used as.
[Edited on Apr 29, 2006 by Clov]
Ummm, you don't have the whole quotation either. Here's the closer.
"What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use, too many whites are getting away with drug sales, too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too."
"It's kind of like sentencing. A lot of people say that we have a heavy sentence for this crime and a light sentence for another crime, and what we ought to do is reduce the heavy sentence so it's more in line with the other. Wrong. In most cases we ought to increase the light sentence and make it compatible with the heavy sentence, and be serious about punishment because we are becoming too tolerant as a society, folks, especially of crime, in too many parts of the country. This country certainly appears to be tolerant, forgive and forget. I mean, you know as well as I do, you go out and commit the worst murder in the world and you just say you're sorry, people go, "Oh, OK. A little contrition."... People say, "I feel better. He said he's sorry for it." We're becoming too tolerant, folks."
Remj said:
He thrives on being right, 100% of the time. And when he's not right, he sets up straw man arguments about how people say he's wrong or dismisses it as a trivial thing.
Every now and then I tune in to his show to hear what he has to say. Sometimes there is a story like the Plame hoohaw being reported on several stations within minutes of each other.
Unfailingly Mr.Fuckedupmybrainsondrugs will play the same soundbite as other stations and somehow manage to come up with an explanation that puts the administration in the right and anyone else looking for the truth in the wrong.
Remj has a knack for understatement. Limbaugh, like Hannity, O'Reilly and that blonde one, are pathological in their need to be right. And they each seem to have the same flawed understanding of what makes a defensible argument.
In the work I've done, it does not help my clients to judge them by my standards. They get where they want to go more quickly when held to their own standards.
So in this case, he should be "sent up." But that assumes he has a direction. Personally I think he is empty inside. He tries to fill the hole by being right. But when that doesn't work because some part of him knows he is full of shit, (odd how emotional emptiness is not filled by mental bullshit, eh?) he doesn't stop to figure shit out. Instead, his back pain is manifest, and perpetuated. Still failing to turn inward to do an honest assessment, he turns to drugs to solve the pain. Like 10 pills a day worth of drugs.
The problem with Limbaugh's comments is that he has the power base to effect legislation on punishment for drug related crimes, did his comments inspire people to inforce tougher penalties for drug possession (anywhere)? If we were talking about your average person they would be sitting in jail right now with a piece of shit public attorney fucking thing up for them. I think we should throw that bitch in jail and throw away the key so he can stand by his words.
reprobate
New Orleans, LA
December 2002
APR 29, 2006 06:38 PM