I have a new sig line I'll use through Election Day, urging Californians to vote for Prop 25 over Prop 26. As has been my usual custom, when I've had a sig line for a while I like to give it a good send-off. So goodbye to the one that I've had for most of a year:
"So if you don't have any teeth, so what? ... Isn't that why they make applesauce?" -- GOP leader Rush Limbaugh
I just want to drive this atrocious comment once more around the block before I let it go.
I want to remind us why we fight and what we're fighting against.
Here's the background. Rep. Louise Slaughter was speaking at the "bipartisan health care summit" before PPACA was passed and she had this to say:
[T]hink about all of the people out there every single day, the number of people with excess deaths because they have no health insurance. I even have one constituent -- you will not believe this, and I know you won't, but it's true -- her sister died. This poor woman had no denture. She wore her dead sister's teeth, which of course were uncomfortable and did not fit. Do you ever believe that in America that that's where we would be?
And so Limbaugh said:
You know I'm getting so many people -- this Louise Slaughter comment on the dentures? I'm getting so many people -- this is big. I mean, that gets a one-time mention for a laugh, but there are people out there that think this is huge because it's so stupid. I mean, for example, well, what's wrong with using a dead person's teeth? Aren't the Democrats big into recycling? Save the planet? And so what? So if you don't have any teeth, so what? What's applesauce for? Isn't that why they make applesauce?
I wish everyone voting in this election could see this comment. This is what we're up against.
Rush Limbaugh knows damn well, from his own experience, what the answer to "So what?" is. It's the same answer that led him to score volumes of Oxycontin illegally to deal with his alleged back pain. Had someone said "So what if he's in chronic pain -- isn't that why they make aspirin and heating pads and ice packs?" to Limbaugh, he would presumably have been able to think of that answer:
Suffering and deprivation are bad. Easing them is good.
How will voters respond to the prospect of a house of Congress, or of state offices, governed by the sneering philosophy of the likes of Limbaugh?
It depends. How they like them apples? How do they like being told "Let them eat applesauce"?