Since when is Rush Limbaugh a moral example for kids?
Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh won the "Author of the Year Award" at the Children's Choice Book Awards for his book Rush Revere and The Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans, in which Rush Revere and a talking horse named Liberty travel back in time to visit the pilgrims. Although the book has never been a critical favorite — accused it of "disdain for even the most rudimentary standards of storytelling" — it has been an enormous commercial success.
It is really interesting how the people who are handing out the
Children's Choice Book Awards are cutting and running from the controversy. Don't bother trying to click on the link to their letter frantically trying to cover their rears -- the link doesn't work.
Supposedly, the books are voted on by kids.
Teams of IRA-affiliated educators in five geographic regions receive copies of each submitted title to provide to students to read and rate in classrooms across their region. The votes from the five regions (from approximately 12,500 children) are compiled and the five titles with the highest number of votes in each category (K-2, 3-4, 5-6) become the finalists for the Children's Choice Book Awards.
But the schools and teachers are self-selected. That means that the sample taken is not scientifically valid, no matter how big it is. That is similar to the self-selected poll that one magazine back in 1936 took to predict that Alfred Landon would beat Franklin Roosevelt in a landslide -- to their eternal shame. And the fact that they are self-selected means that the process is highly vulnerable to politicization.
It is really interesting how the International Reading Association purports to be about evidence-based learning, yet the process that was used to select Rush Limbaugh flies in the face of the most rudimentary standards of data collection of evidence. So the real message that is being sent to kids is that you can say whatever you want as long as you can rig the process the way you want. Vladimir Putin's "elections" in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea had at least as much scientific validity as this process.
I haven't read the book, but the people who read these sorts of books for a living have found the quality something to be desired.
The contemptuous disregard is astounding.
That’s the conclusion I came to after reading Rush Limbaugh’s first book for children, Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims, and its just-published sequel, Rush Revere and the First Patriots. I decided to tackle them after the children’s-literature world went ballistic at Limbaugh’s nomination for Children’s Choice Award Author of the Year. Watching the controversy unfold, it was clear to me that virtually none of the hand-wringers had actually read Limbaugh’s book about a time-traveling substitute teacher—someone had to, after all, so why not me?
I have to say, I really hoped that the book would be good. Part of this is because I am a free-speech absolutist, and the troublemaker in me liked the idea of taking on the anti-Rush hordes. Another part is because I was about to spend a chunk of my precious free time reading it. But mostly I was really, really hoping that the zillions of children who’d been given the book by the throngs who propelled it onto the best-seller list would be spending their time with a good book rather than a bad one. And the verdict?
God-awful. I mean really, breathtakingly, laughably terrible.
So the message that is being sent to kids is that you can make whatever claims you want as long as it suits your political purposes. Never mind about reality.
And Rush Limbaugh is hardly a moral example for our children given that he shows a basic disrespect for women on his show. If we want to talk about traditional moral values, there was a basic Knights Code of Chivalry back in the Middle Ages which showed a lot more respect for women than Rush Limbaugh ever did.
The Knights Code of Chivalry described in the Song of Roland and an excellent representation of the Knights Codes of Chivalry are as follows:
To fear God and maintain His Church
To serve the liege lord in valour and faith
To protect the weak and defenceless
To give succour to widows and orphans
To refrain from the wanton giving of offence
To live by honour and for glory
To despise pecuniary reward
To fight for the welfare of all
To obey those placed in authority
To guard the honour of fellow knights
To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit
To keep faith
At all times to speak the truth
To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun
To respect the honour of women
Never to refuse a challenge from an equal
Never to turn the back upon a foe
Of the seventeen entries in the Knights Codes of Chivalry, according to the Song of Roland, at least 12 relate to acts of chivalry as opposed to combat.
We have listened to Rush on occasion and protecting of the weak and defenseless, fighting for the welfare of all, and respecting the honor of women are all in short supply on Rush Limbaugh's show. If we want our kids to follow basic moral values, then King Arthur or the Song of Roland would be far better places to start than Rush Limbaugh.