With the entire world still mired in a deep recession, the Republicans seem to want the families of homeless veterans to remain homeless. With the entire world still mired in a deep recession, the Republicans have successfully filibustered jobless benefits and state aid. And in case you were wondering if they've lost their basic sense of humanity, conservatives also seem to be coalescing into a coalition for malnourished children. If that sounds a bit harsh, then you missed Rush Limbaugh's latest effort at lowering his own bar. Because not only was he ranting against the government's school lunch program, he was actually joking about child hunger. As quoted by Media Matters:
Then, a companion story from AOL News: "Record Number of US Kids Facing Summer of Hunger." "With the sc-rewl year ending in communities across America, more than 16 million children face a summer of hunger." Now, Michelle Obama told us they're all so fat and out of shape and overweight that a summer off from government eating might be just the ticket.
Are you laughing? With 16,000,000 children facing a summer of hunger, he joked that it might be good for them to lose weight. But it got worse:
You know, one of the benefits of school being out, in addition to your kids losing weight because they're starving to death out there because there's no school meal being provided, one of the benefits of school being out, college campi being vacant this time of year, is that our audience levels go up. I think, you know what we're going to do here, we're going to start a feature on this program: "Where to find food."
To Limbaugh, it's a win-win. Starving kids are funny, and his audience increases, too! And his first suggestion to hungry children was that they check the frig and cupboards, where, he said, they might find junk food. Or they can go to McDonald's. And never mind that hungry children are hungry because, you know, neither they nor their parents or guardians have enough food or money. But Limbaugh has a solution:
There's another place if none of these options work to find food; there's always the neighborhood dumpster. Now, you might find competition with homeless people there, but there are videos that have been produced to show you how to healthfully dine and how to dumpster dive and survive until school kicks back up in August. Can you imagine the benefit we would provide people?
To Limbaugh, hunger is funny. Hungry children are funny. Which means he must really be laughing about all those Republican efforts to punish those in need, including the families of veterans. Congressional Republicans are doing a great job of kicking people when they're down and suffering, and to Limbaugh it's all just one big joke. Particularly if those that are down and suffering are children.
If you think hunger is funny, support the Republicans. If you think child hunger is funny, support the Republicans. Because the Republicans will ensure that there's a lot more of both.