David Limbaugh

The Republican strategy of painting President Obama as an arrogant politician with a messiah-complex dates back to the 2008 campaign, but conservative author David Limbaugh has intensified the use of discredited smears in order to vilify Obama as an evil narcissist. While promoting his new book Crimes Against Liberty (Regnery Publishing) in an interview with blogger John Hawkins of RightWingNews, Limbaugh claims that the “Marxist” Obama and members of his Administration “are tyrannical, dictatorial Stalinists” and that he is “systematically abusing his authority to contravene the rule of law and the Constitution to the detriment of our liberty.”

Limbaugh goes on to delve straight into Birther conspiracy theories:

I'll tell you the Framers, when they inserted that provision in the Constitution that you couldn't have an alien be President -- they did it because they didn't believe a foreigner would have the loyalties to our country. I will just say this and this is kind of irrespective of the rule of law in the legal question, I think Obama has the kind of visceral disloyalty and contempt for America that the Framers were trying to avoid.

I honestly don't know factually whether he was born in Hawaii, but I do know there's a lot of suspicious activity and he's done a lot to suppress his records. He's gone around and asked Harvard student classmates of his not to talk about him. We don't even know if he went to Columbia. Maybe we'll find out later, but this guy's mysterious and his background is so suspect and so negative after being raised by all these America-hating, racist, card-carry communists. ....And what was the question again?

But Limbaugh doesn’t stop there. After recently saying that Obama “truly believes he is god with a small g,” he goes on to say that Obama isn’t just a solipsistic tyrant, but also a secret Muslim:

Barack, while he very well may be a Christian, I'll issue that disclaimer; I have my serious doubts for a bunch of reasons.

We don't have time to go into them all, but he was born a Muslim. I think he has an affinity and an affection for that religion and that culture. You see it in his body language. You see it in his expressed statements. You see him writing in his book that the sweetest sound he ever heard was the Muslim call to prayer. I find that very odd that a Christian, an authentic Christian could say that.

I find it very curious that he could go to a church spewing a black liberation theology, which is more race centered and Marxist centered, than it is Christ centered.

Some on the Right voiced criticism of radio host Don Imus, whose slur against the Rutgers women’s basketball team led to his firing from CBS radio and MSNBC. Jerry Falwell, who was frequently mocked on the show, called Imus’s comments “the most demeaning thing possible.” “He has built his career on saying outrageous, indecent, racist, even blasphemous things,” wrote Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, adding that Imus also targeted Focus founder Dobson. Michael Steele, the former Senate candidate and new chairman of Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC, said Imus should be fired and criticized John McCain for supporting the talker.

But many right-wing commentators defended Imus or used the controversy to push their own agendas. Quite a few decided to attack Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as “race hucksters” (columnist David Limbaugh) or “nappy-headed demagogues” (Yale Kramer for the American Spectator). Mychal Massie, a spokesman for the right-wing Project 21, described the firing of Imus as a “lynching” and accused Jackson, Sharpton, and other Imus critics as “race-baiters” who “are today fomenting unrest and belching racial bile.”

Others used the opportunity to change the subject to their own issues and suggested that Imus critics are hypocritical for not making the same connections. John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute charged that “Imus’s insensitive remarks pale especially in comparison to disparaging comments and cruel recommendations made time and again by leaders of environmental groups.” Alveda King, director of African-American outreach for Frank Pavone’s Priests for Life and a frequent religious-right speaker, declared in a press release, “Yes, Don Imus's apologies are necessary. But I demand the same from every public figure who has ever said that babies in the womb are not persons.”

And a few commentators and activists have suggested that critics of Imus are ignoring “anti-Christian” references in the media. Catholic League President Bill Donohue complained about the lack of interest in his campaign against a Manhattan boutique hotel’s display of a “chocolate Jesus” sculpture and concluded, “In other words, Catholic bashing is humorous and an exercise in liberty. Racism is awful. Bigotry, then, is neither good nor bad—it just depends who the target is.” Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas also decried a supposed “double standard”:

Why aren't these keepers of the First Amendment flame coming to the defense of Don Imus? It's because they have a double standard. Evangelical Christians, practicing Roman Catholics, politically conservative Republicans, home-schoolers and others not in favor among the liberal elite are frequent targets for the left. Anything may be said about them, and frequently is. But if someone insults the left's "protected classes," be they African-Americans, homosexuals or to a lesser extent, adherents to the religion of "global warming," they must be silenced and punished.

According to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, “The message of the ongoing Imus scandal is simple: verbal offenses against anyone other than conservatives or Christians or Jews, will be treated as crimes, and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are the judge and jury.” And Star Parker, author of “Uncle Sam’s Plantation,” warned that Congress is considering extending violent-hate-crimes protections to gays and wrote, “With the passage of this so-called hate-crime bill, pastors will be intimidated to condemn homosexual behavior from their pulpits. Is this the freedom we want?”

Finally, a few right-wing commentators tried to make Imus a symbol of white-male victimhood. MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan decried the “Imus Lynch Party,” writing, “The issue here is not the word Imus used. The issue is who Imus is -- a white man, who used a term about black women only black folks are permitted to use with impunity and immunity.” In a Human Events column, Mac Johnson declared that “Apologizing to Al Sharpton Was Imus’s True Racist Act” and speculated,

Now think about how stupid and racist all this is. Were Chris Rock, in the heat of a comedic diatribe, to call someone, say, a “limp-haired slut” what would he do next? Would he ask to go on David Duke’s radio show so that Duke could accept an apology on behalf of all “white people” and then issue a suitable penance? (“Donate to my charity, Chris! You don’t look sorry enough yet.”) Somehow, I don’t think so.

And Rebecca Hagelin, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, attacked “the tentacles of radical feminist thought” that she claims are “poisoning the image” of white males through the media and Title IX sports programs. “The white, Anglo-Saxon male, the young teenage guy, is probably the most discriminated against kid on the face of the earth right now,” she declared on “The O’Reilly Factor.”

See comments on the Imus controversy by People For the American Way Foundation staff and by founder Norman Lear here.

David Limbaugh, Robert Knight, Concerned Women complain. City said “Nativity Story” clips were “too commercial”; the festival has its own nativity scene.

Rick Scarborough held his second rally to oppose a Missouri ballot initiative on embryonic stem cell research. At the first, former talk show host and presidential candidate Alan Keyes compared the anti-stem cell campaign to the civil rights movement. In a Cape Girardeau high school gymnasium last night, Keyes suggested the amendment would lead to the creation of an army of slave clones. From the Southeast Missourian:

Speakers at the Christians Against Human Cloning rally painted the proposal as the next step in a satanic onslaught, using promises of cures to promote tyranny and death.

Alan Keyes, the keynote speaker, said embryonic stem-cell research is the moral equivalent of Nazi medical experiments on the inmates of death camps during World War II.

And despite wording in Amendment 2 imposing harsh criminal penalties on anyone attempting to create a living human clone using the stem-cell research techniques, Keyes raised the possibility of an industrial effort to produce clones.

The result, he said, would be "new legions of humans to be enslaved and brutalized."

While Keyes envisioned the clone legions, Scarborough claimed that supporters of the amendment “are leveling their howitzers at the prayer army” composed of his followers.

(Don Frazier, Southeast Missourian)