In my car, alone, and sometimes at home - to my wife's discomfort - I listen
to Rush Limbaugh or catch his TV show.
I have heard enough of Limbaugh over the years to get the gist of his
message and of his style, which is the medium of his message. The man's
opinions might not be of much interest except that they are nearly
inescapable. He has national air time for over twenty hours a week and he
reaches some five million people every day, in long, continuous monologues.
Limbaugh, a veritable rotor of right wing politics in North America, is
furthermore an entertainer. He can make people laugh.
The problem is that the man has an ugly side-a very ugly side.
The quote above must be considered. It is vintage Limbaugh when he gets
rolling on his radio show. (He writes books, too, but they are severely
whitewashed; you have to listen to Limbaugh's radio voice to get to know
him). On the radio, usually from a position of outrageous umbrage, he is
one major national commentator willing to prejudge a whole race of people
and perpetrate a racial slur that must be seen as significant, considering
the breadth of the source. Why would a man in Limbaugh's position call
Native peoples savages in this day and age?
Limbaugh is neither stupid nor particularly careless. True, he is
self-promoting to an embarrassing degree, but he is nevertheless a master
manipulator of public discourse with stated political goals. He is also a
commentator who regularly uses the power of the medium and of his formatted
personae to persuade, cajole and, at appointed times, command a large
public to political action.
With a message well-suited for these mean times-his dominant idea seems to
be championing unmitigated business development by dismissing all gestures
of cooperative (as opposed to confrontational) thinking, and all efforts to
regulate human activity to protect the earth and its resources - he plays to
a major national audience, whose frustration and anger he mines in pursuit
of ideological imperatives.
Dismissed for years as mostly buffoon while his popularity increased
exponentially, Limbaugh whipped up the troops last November and, ditto,
ditto, ditto, won an election for the Republicans. Time put him on a cover
then and Ted Koppel invited him to comment on his news show (as if twenty
hours of national air time per week is not enough for one mortal). Thus
Limbaugh proved himself a hugely influential and highly marketable
commentator. All of which makes it particularly troubling that
dehumanization through racist stereotyping (used against Indians since
Cotton Mather) is a trademark of the rotund disc jockey.
Limbaugh developed his national audience by cleverly employing an old
shtick: funny umbrage at imagined groups-the media, people on welfare,
immigrants, feminists, and now Native Americans-that he props up to hit
with a wide-slapping brush of ridicule, outright misinterpretation, and
wanton disrespect. Limbaugh's shtick, becoming increasingly evident in
media and in politics, is a 1990s kind of bigotry.
Those who like their politics mixed in with ridicule especially enjoy his
antagonistic sarcasm, ostensibly directed at "Liberals" but hitting,
double-barreled, at many of the poor and resourceless groups whom Limbaugh
giddily and nastily defines coast to coast. A master at reducing truth to
comic line, he also knows how to repeat a half-truth that serves his
purpose so regularly that it becomes a sort of reality substitute.
Apparently, he is confident enough in his own positioning to hurl out
stereotypes at whole classes and races of people without the slightest fear
of rebuttal. In this era of trial by airtime, Limbaugh is a hanging judge.
The comment quoted earlier is not his first on Native peoples. I remember
another, from 1992, when Native delegations met at the landmark Rio
conference on environment and development. "What a ragtag looking bunch,"
he laughed on the air, expounding then too on the savage ways of Indians
and mocking "these fools out there" in the environmental movement who
support Indians and want "us to live like stone-age people."
As Limbaugh is unabashedly political, one must assume that his attacks are
orchestrated, his targets carefully selected. In this context, the
connection with Native peoples is about the general public concern over
environmental degradation, which Limbaugh and the interests he truly
represents would like to see discredited or at least reduced. If the
promised new era of non-regulated exploitative extraction of natural
resources is to get underway, concern over environment and Indians is a
troublesome factor.
But, hey, the Indians "these people were out there destroying timber."
What Rush is doing is transparent. It is part of the lining up of forces.
Since Native peoples' issues often and naturally coincide with
environmental concerns, Native peoples themselves must be attacked. As
environmentalists are increasingly recognizing, interest in Native peoples
and causes offers a convergence point where ecological issues can be
creatively conceived. Native peoples' traditions are not made up by
counter-culturalists or academic theorists - they are long-standing human
ways that speak to the relationship to the natural world and can form the
core of a realistic discussion among broad sectors of the population.
Native Traditional Knowledge is sometimes abused or trivialized, but it is
now widely accepted as a base to on which to develop a true environmental
philosophy.
A man in Limbaugh's position, I believe, must find ways to discredit that
connection. That is his job. And Limbaugh is clearly very diligent about
doing his job.
We might do well to consider Rush Limbaugh and his way with words - not to
banter with him, but because he should not so wantonly dominate and even
seriously impact this most serious of topics. He should not be allowed to
issue bigoted and racialist statements unchallenged. We should not pretend
such language and attitudes are proper for a public commentator of such
wide reach.
Let's remember what Rush said.
"The American Indians were meaner to themselves than anybody was ever mean
to them."
This is the basic stereotype on Indians: a warlike nature. Rush is starting
by harping on this one. Watch him run with it again and again. It has just
enough reality in it to make it useful. For instance, it is true that
Indians warred, and that during wartime people sometimes acted with
meanness and brutality. You won't hear from Limbaugh, however, how the
damage inflicted in traditional Indian disputes pales in comparison to the
mass exterminations carried out against tribes, or by nation-states against
civilian populations. It is a cheap stereotype. A trick.
"The people were savages. It's true, they damn well were. Scalping people."
This is a deepening of the stereotype, deceitful and manipulative not only
for what it says, but for what it hides and obfuscates.
By focusing on the "war-like" Indian image, by invoking the designation of
"savage," the far more prevalent philosophies of Native American societies -
governmental and spiritual constructs that emphasize values such as
cooperation, reciprocity, and spiritual appreciation - the documented
reality of Native American knowledge systems is completely left out of the
listeners' perceptions. This reflects the Limbaugh style: over hours and
hours each week, only negative images are reinforced of anyone Limbaugh
perceives to be an enemy.
You won't tune in to find Rush asking Carl Sagan about ozone layer
depletion or interviewing Native scholars on the variety of Native cultural
viewpoints. Why present a balanced view when ridicule can suffice? Perhaps
for Limbaugh a dialogue with "savages" would be unthinkable. "I am equal
time," the commentator is prone to answer, when questioned on the lack of
balance in his shows.
They taught at my journalism alma mater how principles of public
information handling were worked out over many decades. Major thinkers in
American life contributed to the idea of balanced use of information
channels - especially the national networks. Whether the law dictates it
or not, the ethic holds that balanced journalism, well documented, is of
central value to society. Simple, preferably depersonalized, styles were
expected from information handlers.
In that context, Limbaugh is to the national discourse what professional
wrestling is to sports. Blowing his point of view often and loudly he takes
center stage in the arena. His loud reductionism bombards the mind. His
trick hold? That most scurrilous form of argumentation - crafting straw men
for demolition - which he has down to a fine science. His sarcastic,
constantly mocking style stresses the negative as primary - the negative, of
course, of whatever he is against; the positive, and only the positive, of
what he is for.
Still, despite his self-consciously arrogant style, Rush can make people
laugh. He is superb at skewering politicians' vanities, for instance. And
no one is better at pulling out the loose threads of the Liberal coat,
which he can then retie in clever knots of common logic, bathed in acid
humor. He identifies some of what is wrong with the country after forty
years of (so-called) Liberal policies, and he can make sense. The problem
is that Limbaugh projects his opinions in such one-sided, pin-the-blame
contexts that the truth of matters is inevitably trivialized.
Limbaugh is superb at reducing environmentalism to some "animal rights nut"
who won't kill a rat even to save her child from going through painful
rabies shots. Listeners can identify with Rush's outrage as his unbroken
monologue guides us through. But then, hey, how about that spotted owl, he
says, and feigns eating a spotted owl, as if that somehow eliminates the
need for biodiversity conservation. Rush tells us that there are more trees
today than a century ago. Deforestation is not a problem. According to him,
well, ahem, "there is no damage to the ozone layer, ha ha." Indians and
environment? Hey, "these people were out there destroying timber."
We used to know the difference between a stand-up comic with a political
bent and a social commentator who, with respect and journalistic balance
(the operative principle), integrates a range of information, analyzes the
conflicting viewpoints, and strives to provide the public with a better
ability to interpret. But Limbaugh blurs the two roles more thoroughly than
anyone. His ego expands visibly as his "talent, on-loan from God,"
apparently grants him infallibility.
Limbaugh likes to run down a long list of people and causes that, in his
eyes, fuel the Liberal conspiracy to end Free Enterprise, which must be
saved from those he seems to consider less legitimate peoples with inferior
viewpoints. That Free Enterprise might have excesses or that market-driven
ideas are not always sacrosanct does not enter the picture. That some
situations might not fit within the Left/Right dichotomy seems inconceivable
to Limbaugh. With him, it's full speed ahead, economically, and damn the
rest. We can be sure now though: Native peoples - long condemned as
"obstacles to progress" - are on the list.
It may be wise to keep watch on the bigoted views of Rush Limbaugh. Since
he serves as a barometer of the national climate, familiarity with his
points of attack can be useful. But remember also this truth: Native
Americans - Limbaugh's so-called savages - carried out a prescribed protocol
of participatory democracy that sat human beings in a circle. The object of
discussion was placed in the center of the circle and in relation to it,
everyone in the circle had a view, a unique vantage point. The truth was
said to emerge from the common discussion, the respectful appreciation of
everyone else's point of view. Highly trained specialists (elders) gathered
the consensus. This style of governance spawned confederacies and produced
a palpable freedom, a shared experience that inspired colonial American
leaders, and that is more "of America" than Rush Limbaugh, from his glass-
enclosed, push-button, over-blown, self-aggrandizing world will ever be.
Jose' Barreiro is editor-in-chief of Native Americas.
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Brendan F. White
Circulation
Akwe:kon Press NATIVE AMERICAS
300 Caldwell Hall "Nowhere else will you be able to get
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Ithaca, New York 14853 -Wilma Mankiller
tel. (607) 255-4308 Editorial Board Member
(800) 9-NATIVE
fax. (607)255-0185
e-mail bfw2@cornell.edu
native_americas@cornell.edu
Homepage http://nativeamericas.aip.cornell.edu
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