Rush Limbaugh once again put his foot in his mouth about women, accusing the GOP of appeasement before the 2014 election.
“We already have, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know how many museums for women all over the country,” Limbaugh said. “They are called malls.”
Rush was taking exception to a bipartisan plan to create a national Women's History Museum near the National Mall.
“All those war museums and memorials, those are museums to men,” Limbaugh said. “We’ve left the women out, that’s right.”
“They think that this is going to nullify some of the negatives attached to this baseless claim that Republicans are conducting a war on women,” he said.
Rush, of course, misses the whole point. The purpose is to raise awareness of important women throughout history. There are many other memorials that we have always put up to commemorate our history. We have the Vietnam Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Jefferson Memorial. Our taxpayer dollars go to support the US Holocaust Museum so that all generations remember what happened in World War II.
The Founding Fathers were a group of patriarchal businessmen and property owners who were fed up with taxation without representation. But ever since our country was established, the true patriots of this country have been the Blacks, women, immigrants, abolitionists, suffragists, civil rights leaders, gays, straights, socialists, anarchists, and others. All of them had one thing in common -- they all wanted to leave a better world for their children.
Rush's rant betrays a lack of curiosity about our country's history and heritage. It is a common lament in right-wing circles to rant about how the country is going to pot. But how can Rush or anyone else have a qualified opinion about it if he doesn't even bother to take an interest in what made our country great in the first place? It is obvious that this mentality is outside the mainstream of American political thought given that this is an effort which has support of both Republicans and Democrats.
We'll give FOX News the benefit of the doubt given that one of my real-life right-wing friends told me the other day that FOX News was better than the other networks but was still half lies. Rush Limbaugh has the right to have whatever opinions he wants. But why do mainstream outlets, including FOX, continue to give Rush Limbaugh the kind of platform that he still has when his views are so outside the mainstream even among Republicans?
If Rush Limbaugh wants to live outside the mainstream of American political thought, that's his choice. But he can create his own network like Glenn Beck; he can even charge people for access to his show. He can take advantage of the free enterprise just like the rest of us. But we have just as much of a free speech right to question why he continues to have the kind of platform that he does when even corporate suits and long-time allies are fleeing him in droves.