Limbaugh responds

Media Matters excerpted a segment from Rush Limbaugh's 20 January radio show in which he attempted to explain his "ching chong ching chong" gibbering the day before:

... Normally when you watch these things the translation is either simultaneous or else the foreign language spokesman will speak for a while, pause, the translator will translate it, then resume, then the translator will translate, then resume, and what I noticed was, it was the first time ever, they just kept going, both sides of this. So I'm saying, well, I -- I -- I have no idea of what Hu Jintao is saying, I wanted to report to you what he was saying, but there was a translation [sic], so all I could do is tell you what he said, which I did a remarkable job of doing for someone who doesn't know the language.

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I'm sorry, I couldn't speak for a moment, as I had to pick my jaw up from the floor.

If I believed that Rush Limbaugh were a comedian as subversive as Stephen Colbert, that would have come off as a carefully considered, maybe even brilliant bit of self-parody.

However, Limbaugh's not a comedian. He apparently thinks of himself as an entertainer (see below), but he's no comedian, and he possesses neither the talent nor the intelligence to pull off subversive humor of the quality of Colbert's. What we got above was a stunning bit of chutzpah.

Perhaps a Yiddish term is appropriate, as Limbaugh continued by invoking a man who speaks only English and Yiddish, but for his livelihood pretended to speak many more languages:

But back in the old days, you know, Sid Caesar, for those of you old enough to remember, was called a comic genius for impersonating foreign languages that he couldn't speak. But today [chuckles], today the left is exercised. I mean, I -- that was racism, it was bigotry, it was insulting. It wasn't. It was a service. I insulted the ChiComs. I insulted the ChiComs, I insulted 3000 years of Chinese history. I did, I insulted -- wait, here, let me find it here, there's a state senator in California by the name of Leland Yee, he's from San Francisco, and he claims that I owe the Chinese community an apology for mocking the speech. [apparently quoting] "State senator Leland Yee [of] San Francisco called on conservative radio personality" -- that's a new one -- "Rush Limbaugh to apologize to the ChiCom community today for mocking Chinese President Hu Jintao's speech."

Let's pause right there for a moment, and work backwards to analyze Limbaugh's impaired logic.

First of all, Limbaugh -- intentionally or not, we'll never know -- uses the term "ChiCom" in his (apparent) quotation of Senator Yee's statement. If you're a Dittohead, "ChiCom" is Limbaugh-speak for "Chinese Communist." Not being a Dittohead I don't know why he feels the need to abbreviate, but there it is. However, Yee did not use that term, nor the term "Communist," anywhere in his statement. According to multiple sources (including the SF Weekly, SFGate, and the San Mateo County Times), here is what Yee actually wrote:

Mr. Limbaugh owes the Chinese community an apology for this pointless and ugly offense.

Forget trying to mimic Mandarin, Rush, you need to learn to read English first.

Now, let's get back to the estimable Sid Caesar. Caesar, as Limbaugh notes, is a comedian, one of the giants of early television. One of Caesar's trademark riffs was speaking long passages of unintelligible gobbledygook that was nevertheless curiously suggestive of actual languages, such as Italian. Of course, Caesar performed his bits as part of comedy sketches on his TV shows. Is that what Limbaugh claims he was doing, performing a comedy sketch? Why, no: "it was a service."

Rush, you can claim you were playing the fool, as Caesar did, or you can claim you were performing a service for your audience, but you can't claim both, even in your weird little world. (By the way, I've heard your original "service," and to mention your extended gibbering in the same breath as Caesar's inspired verbal gymnastics is deeply insulting to Caesar.)

So I'll take him at his word: Limbaugh thinks he performed a service to his listeners, and did "a remarkable job" of it to boot.

You know, Rush, I knew ten-year-olds when I was growing up who performed the same service to their Asian classmates. By your standards, they, too, did "a remarkable job" even though they didn't know the language. Curiously, though, they didn't seem to take the same kind of pride in their job as you do: they only performed their service when no adults were around, and only when they outnumbered their Asian audience. When I was older, I learned the name of this service: "race-baiting."

Those ten-year-olds' excuse was that they were ten. What's yours?

I thought about continuing to quote from Media Matters' excerpt of Limbaugh's show, but what's the point? He race-baits at the level of a ten-year-old, and he defends himself with words and logic that only a ten-year-old could accept.

Is he still pulling 20 million people to his show? That's kind of a sad commentary on this country -- as is the ringing silence from most quarters on Limbaugh's gibbering. Aside from Asian-American elected officials, no one seems to be all that upset. I've seen more commentary and criticism on the Huckleberry Finn bowdlerization.