"Revenge of the Liberal Media" on Rush

In 2003, Joe Sobran, who was a Patrick Buchanan conservative, wrote one of the great articles on Rush Limbaugh after it was found out that he had "been illegally buying prescription painkillers and publicly confessed his addiction." It is a marvelous work of writing because it showed the greatness of Rush despite his failings and revealed the hypocrisy of the liberal media by showing its supposed most prized "virtues":

 Revenge of the Liberal Media

“Limbaugh’s long-running act as a paragon of virtue is over,” crows Evan Thomas in Newsweek. The magazine devotes its October 20 cover story to a snide portrait of the talk-radio superstar, who has been illegally buying prescription painkillers and publicly confessed his addiction.

Its columnist Jonathan Alter also chimes in, predicting that Limbaugh will receive “the compassion he routinely denies to other people” and hoping he’ll now offer “a more tolerant and less vitriolic message.”

Say what you will, over the past decade or so Rush Limbaugh has had a truly remarkable impact on American public life. He has totally shattered the old liberal media monopoly. Even conservatives (like me) who now find him disappointing are judging him by standards he himself has done so much to change. He has come to seem routine, almost conventional; but not so long ago liberals were portraying him as sinister, dangerous, possibly fascistic.

Since Limbaugh is far too familiar and genial to paint the swastika on, Thomas and his team of crack investigative reporters are now showing him as a shy, overweight, pathetic loser, and near-recluse, from high school onward. We learn that he never finished college, and is “a childless, twice-divorced, thrice-married schlub.” We are even told that (unnamed) women who have dated him complained that he “talked about himself and didn’t seem interested in them at all,” the brute!

No stone is left unturned, or unthrown: “He was not much of a success as a disc jockey, either.” His father urged him to become a lawyer and tried to dissuade him from pursuing a career in radio...

... As John O’Sullivan has put it, “The defense of virtue must not be left to the virtuous.” There aren’t enough of them. Some of the best people in the world are inarticulate, and they need the support of those who, though imperfect, have the polemical skills to make the case for God’s law in the public forum...

I have my own reservations about Limbaugh, but I could never wish this on him: an ugly dose of liberal tolerance. I think his jocose boasting is tiresome, but after all, it’s a joke. He has never posed as “a paragon of virtue.” He argues for more-or-less conservative public standards without pretending to exemplify them...


... I love the story related by the French writer-statesman Andre Malraux. Malraux once asked an old priest what he’d learned about human nature from listening to thousands of people’s darkest secrets in the confessional.

The priest was naturally reluctant to answer. Malraux stressed that he wasn’t asking him to violate the seal of the confessional, merely seeking generalizations. Finally, the priest said he’d learned two basic things. First, people are more unhappy than they seem. Second, nobody ever really grows up.

To me that’s a priceless observation. This is a world of children trying to act like adults. Now and then we get a glimpse of the real child behind the grownup façade. You can take a malicious glee in what you see; or you can say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Liberals are now gloating like little brats at Limbaugh’s discomfort.

Limbaugh is actually proving he’s the opposite of a hypocrite. He’s following his own advice, which is to take your medicine without blaming others for your fate. He doesn’t deny people compassion; he just refuses to equate compassion with government programs. The liberals’ great hypocrisy is to claim a monopoly of compassion for referring all social problems to the state. Talk about posing as paragons of virtue!

So part of Limbaugh’s punishment is an ordeal by slander. It’s not even as if he were smoking pot or taking “recreational” drugs. Like many other people, he got addicted to painkillers after surgery. How much he is to blame for this, only God knows; but Newsweek is ready, willing, and eager to assume the worst. Liberal tolerance! Liberal compassion! Take a good look...

...  I almost hate to say it at just this moment, but Limbaugh’s brand of conservatism strikes me as essentially timid. He plays it safe and stays well within the neoconservative guidelines for “respectable” conservatives. He’s more a Republican apologist than a principled conservative. But, unlike his enemies (and even some of his allies), he’s too decent to attack the weak. His foes rarely attack anyone else.

Newsweek inadvertently makes Limbaugh a sympathetic figure. It wasn’t able to dredge up anything shocking. Instead, it found a rather sad, shy loner, discouraged by his own father, who dreamed of success in radio and was resilient enough to achieve it.

Straining, however, to put the pretty tame facts in the worst light, the magazine only underlines the magnitude of Limbaugh’s achievement and its own irrational hatred of anyone who looks like a conservative. [http://www.sobran.com/wanderer/w2003/w031023.shtml]

Francis Notes:

- Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

"[T]he Pope... WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See."
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said "the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church."
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

- "If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

- "Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

 -  LifeSiteNews, "Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers," December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows "sexually active adulterous couples facing 'complex circumstances' to 'access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'"

-  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

"The AAS statement... establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense."

- On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

"Francis' heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents."

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes:  

- Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: "212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted...Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden" [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

- Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times "Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003": http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

- Tucker Carlson's Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written" according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

 

- A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God's Will and to do it.

 

Pray an Our Father now for America.

 

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.