Rush, Rudy, Sharpton and Crown Heights (let’s not do the time warp again)
New York appears to be caught in some sort of time warp, as old racial feuds from the early 1990s are suddenly erupting.
1) Angry over essentially being rejected in his bid to become a part-owner of the St. Louis Rams football team, Rush Limbaugh took to The Wall Street Journal last week to defend himself and blast his opponents. At one point, he took direct aim at one of his most vocal critics, Al Sharpton:
It didn't take long before my name was selectively leaked to the media as part of the Checketts investment group. Shortly thereafter, the media elicited comments from the likes of Al Sharpton. In 1998 Mr. Sharpton was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $65,000 for falsely accusing a New York prosecutor of rape in the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. He also played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews "diamond merchants") and 1995 Freddie's Fashion Mart riot.
Sharpton has threatened to sue for defamation. But at least one person has Rush's back: Norman Rosenbaum, the brother of the yeshiva student killed in the Crown Heights riots:
Norman Rosenbaum, whose 29-year-old brother was killed during the riot, pledged to do "whatever I can" to help Limbaugh if Sharpton goes through with his threat to sue. ... "He was a divisive, old-fashioned, racist bigot," Rosenbaum said from his home in Australia, while at the same time admitting that he didn't "spark the riots."
2) If all that weren't enough ... Rudy Giuliani sparked controversy Sunday when he warned Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn that crime would return if Michael Bloomberg is not re-elected:
"I worried daily that the city might be turned back to the way it was before 1993 -- and you know exactly what I'm talking about," he told the Boro Park Jewish Community Council.
"This community remembers the fears, the worries and the crimes -- and the great fear of going out at night and walking the streets."
Giuliani is being accused of playing the race card.
Bloomberg, meanwhile, played the Detroit card: "Detroit went from a great city with lots of good-paying jobs to a city that's basically holding on for dear life," the mayor said.
The comment drew a rebuke from Giuliani biographer Fred Siegel: "If this isn’t a rude, racial invocation, then you don’t mention Detroit."
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As usual, Rush is right. Sharpton’s actions are an attempt to switch the subject from his and other anti-Rush types bashing of Rush using ad hominem attacks and falsified quotes. Rush is the one who should and hopefully will be suing these hate mongers and shake down artists.
Rev. Al and Limbaaaaaaaah at war? I love it. Two professional demagogues at war with each other, how appropriate.
Only someone who identifies with the lies, bigotry, misinformation and hateful rhetoric of Limbaugh could possibly suggest that he is a harmless player on the American scene.
Moishgil, it would appear that political leanings trump even ethical considerations for you. One does not need to agree with Rush Limbaugh to condemn Sharpton’s extremist and violent rabble-rousing, and antisemitic language on top of that. Sharpton is clearly the worst sort of demogogue. Limbaugh is not a demagogue at all, even if his views are sharply critical of the liberal left and so he gets you angry (as shown in your own wild and exaggerated rhetoric). But, mind you, it is not yet a crime in the U.S. to be conservative and centrist-right in politics.
I don’t know all that much about Rush Limbaugh; the last book by him I read was over two decades ago, so although there was no racism nor bigotry in it, just very straight talk and opinions, basically fairly mainstream conservative in nature (Barry Goldwater was a hero), it occurred to me that maybe he has changed since then, and I could therefore be wrong about him. So, to check him out, I went to his website, at http://www.rushlimbaugh.com. It looks like he is precisely the same sort of person he was two decades ago, a bit to the right of John McCain and Huckaby (sp?) but still within the frame. A very large percentage of the American population votes on the center right of politics; they cannot all be dismissed from democratic discourse. As Lloyd Marcus, a proudly “Black unhyphenated American,” wrote in American Thinker this past week, “If Rush Limbaugh is a Racist, Are His 20 Million Listeners Also?” (http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/if_rush_limbaugh_is_a_racist_a.html).
Limbaugh himself has discussed his supposedly racist comments (never made by him) in the Wall Street Journal, at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704322004574477021697942920.html.
I particularly like the comments of Mark Steyn on the controversy; he is always witty and to the point: this is in regard to the claim that Limbaugh is “divisive” (i.e., disagrees with the liberal left): http://www.ocregister.com/articles/mao-million-don-2610375-saying-dream
So I stand by what I wrote: Limbaugh is no demagogue, even his views do not accord with the liberal left that so dominates media discourse.
“… even IF his views do not accord with the liberal left ...,” I meant. I might have added, even if his views do not accord with my own, either. I am not defending him because I agree with him. Still, Limbaugh seems to be a decent person and certainly his views are still entirely within and even strongly supportive of the liberal democratic tradition and framework. Democracy and true liberalism (classical liberalism) has nothing to fear from him, and in fact, we need people like Rush Limbaugh who can vigorously defend positions on the right. Otherwise our entire society will get unbalanced and unsane, even tend to totalitarianism. The media does no one a favor by being so strongly leftist; it certainly does not help support democracy. Democracy is the most successful, peaceable and long-lasting type of political system precisely because there is freedom to express views that do not accord with the official line on political virtue, and thus to remind people that there are respectable multiple sides to important issues. Rush Limbaugh is doing moishegil a big favor by not agreeing with him.
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Hirsh Fendel
10/20/09 02:52 PM
should Jews supportr bloomberg even though he boycots Jewish charities and gives billions to goyiim? Many rich jews give almost exclusevely to goy charities and this my dear readers is a giant failure of the israeli controlled jewish establishment in america