Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Bill O'Reilly felt a towering moral outrage so great that he launched an on the air vendetta to pressure Pepsi Cola from hiring rapper Ludacris after he recorded an album entitled "Word of Mouf" that tremendously offended the talk show host.  While self-styled moralist O'Reilly fervently attacked he ardently promoted a novel he wrote entitled "Those Who Trespass" and comparisons of the two works for offensive subject matter revealed interesting results.  

O'Reilly surpassed Ludacris and his objectionable album in murders by a 6 to 4 count.  Ludacris outpointed O'Reilly in the total sex scene category 68 to 39, but the Fox commentator had the edge 1 to 0 in his presentation of a "teen crack oral slut scene" since Ludacris did not present any.  

Perhaps O'Reilly should be asked if he sent any autographed copies of "Those Who Trespass" to Falwell, Robertson or Reed.  Would the religious right consider holding a prayer vigil to bring O'Reilly back to rectitude following his novel and that sexual harassment suit he insisted he would fight, and was a lie, only to pay a settlement fee that the Washington Post estimated was "in the millions"?

As for Rush Limbaugh, not only was he a vigilant believer that global warning was a myth and a fraud, stacking his expertise as a loquacious talk show host and former male nurse as a Sacramento hospital alongside some 53 Nobel Prize scientists, he also led the  fight against anyone who took drugs.  
Limbaugh was a hard-liner with a take no prisoners attitude, no matter how small the quantity or circumstances of the individual.  At one point he fulminated about shipping all drug users out of the country and at another believed that the solution to the problem was sending them to prison and throwing away the key.  "Show no mercy" was the Limbaugh mantra.

The "show no mercy" rule was appropriately amended to include rich right wing talk show hosts who hungrily popped pills.  While Sean Hannity called for "compassion" others focused on how much empathy was displayed by Limbaugh, not to mention the sheer hypocrisy of denouncing users when he was perhaps high at the time himself, or salivating for his next pill-popping opportunity.  

While calling for compassion from others Limbaugh has been looking out for himself.  While drug addicts are generally known to be penniless the affluent Limbaugh has hired expensive Miami criminal lawyer Roy Black to prevent federal authorities from prying into his medical records.  But Rush, these are government authorities and, well, don't you support the Patriot Act?

These are only a few of the points covered in an entertaining volume.  The interesting element is how little the critics have to say when they can quote the radical right as their leading spokespersons indict themselves.    

In addition to referring to interesting selections from a work containing much valuable information that also includes an analysis of the rantings of bigot Michael Savage, I feel disposed toward adding a snippet dealing with the self-styled moral philosopher of the American right, Bill Bennett.  In his anxiety to pile on Bill Clinton and denouncing what he believed to be a negative pattern of behavior that set a bad moral tone for America, Bennett took his argument one step further and initiated what we will call a morality ripple effect.  When the information dam burst and it was revealed that corporate banditry was running rampant in America at Enron and elsewhere Bennett pointed his moralist's finger of blame squarely at Clinton.

Boardroom corruption and Clinton's culpability were linked.  The linkage related to a morality ripple effect.  The tawdry news concerning Clinton's sex life generated a ripple effect that carried over to corporate America.  CEOs in corporate boardrooms were influenced by Clinton's moral lapses with the result being widespread white-collar corruption.  

Since moralist Bennett posed his theory it has been learned that the posing devout Catholic has provided numerous beneficent donations to an unlikely source, the casino owners of Las Vegas.  One trip to the Bellagio Hotel's Casino alone resulted in moralist Bennett parting with a reported $625,000 while another culminated in a reported loss of another $500,000.