Keith Olbermann, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh All Dirty on ‘Retardgate’

Yes, this is another “Retard-gate” post. Why? Because while I agree that Palin is right to condemn Rahm Emanuel’s use of the term “retarded,” and I agree that Sarah Palin’s failure to call out Rush Limbaugh is hypocritical, I still think everybody is dropping the ball on this.

With very few exceptions, nobody has standing to feign outrage over this, not Palin, not Rush, and not Keith Olbermann. In fact, I think Limbaugh almost has a leg to stand on.

Rush Limbaugh is a humorist, though arguably not a very good one. As such, he doesn’t have a duty to be inoffensive, and he takes that lack of duty very seriously. It’s not his fault that Sarah Palin and her ilk revere him as the figurehead of their entire political movement. Bashing Rush for saying “retard” is like slamming the Wolfman for not using his salad fork.

On the other hand, Rush is a coward who refuses to take ownership of his own words. He claims today that he was “just quoting him.  I’m just quoting Rahm Emanuel.”

No, Rush, that’s not true. Here’s what you said: (actual quoting of Rahm in bold)

Emanuel’s getting ticked off out there saying, (paraphrasing) “What are you blaming us for?  We didn’t do anything about it, you F-ing retards.” I think the big news is the crack-up going on.  But our politically correct society is acting like some giant insult’s taken place by calling a bunch of people who are “retards,” “retards.”  I mean these people, these liberal activists are kooks.  They are Looney Tunes.  I’m not going to apologize for it.

Let me illustrate it for you, Rush. If I say “Get off me, you fat shit,” I’m just quoting your last 14 girlfriends, but if I say “Rush Limbaugh is a fat shit,” then I’m just calling you a fat shit. Why can’t you just sac up and admit you like saying “retard?”

Now, Palin had a good point when she said that Rahm Emanuel’s comment was offensive. Mediaite’s Lindsay Van Kirk has the right attitude about this. She and her sister showed true concern and patience in trying to open others’ eyes to the hurt that this word can cause.

Where Palin immediately loses is in her demand to have Emanuel fired. She unmasks herself as an opportunist, and her concern as exploitation. Worse than that, she is part of a political movement that has spent years mocking the very notion of sensitivity, which they mock as “political correctness” and claim is literally killing Americans.

Even worse than that is that this is another example of Republicans not giving a shit about something until it happens to them, i.e. Ronald Reagan and stem cell research. In this case, are we to believe that Palin, absent her own child, would favor “socialist” government services for disabled children? The world will never know.

Then, there’s Keith Olbermann. First, he uses the words of an extremely hostile witness, Levi Johnston, to indict Palin for allegedly calling Trig her “retarded baby” in private, without ever considering that many people plow through adversity with dark humor in private. Outside of that context, Keith Olbermann is not in a position to judge.

Furthermore, during the 2008 campaign, Keith made a big show of donating a big check to the Special Olympics, chiefly to shame Palin. By itself, this was exploitative, since Keith never made a peep about the Special Olympics unless there was a point to be scored.

But in the very same episode as his Special Olympics largesse, he ran his regular “McCain in the Membrane” feature. The graphic for this segment? A “short bus.”*

Which brings me to most of you, and myself. Anyone who has never told, or laughed at, a retard/short bus/”special ed” joke, take one step forward. Seriously, Professor Hawking? Never?

Liberal and conservative blogs are teeming with references to “libtards,” “f#@ktards,” “Paul-tards,” every kind of tard imaginable. Nobody cares about offending “retards” until there’s some hay to be made.

So, instead of all this seething outrage, why not just take a quiet moment to reflect and say, “Yeah, that’s really not nice?” Instead of trying to create a generation of people who will go around grumbling “I got fired because of them retards,” why not focus the attention productively?

*In fairness to Countdown, at the time, I emailed the show’s producers about my concern, and while they did not acknowledge it on-air, they did switch to a McCain bobble-head graphic for the segment after that.

Update and Correction: The “short bus” graphic was not used for the “McCain in the Membrane” segment, but for “Double-talk Express.” As such, ignore the endnote, since I’m not sure if they used it again. As a regular Countdown viewer, however, I haven’t seen it used since, for whatever that’s worth.

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