By Hal Brown
This guy just made the news again:
Limbaugh dismisses the concept of consent in sexual relations. He views consent as "the magic key to the left". In 2014, Limbaugh criticized a policy at Ohio State University encouraging students to obtain verbal consent, saying "How many of you guys . . . have learned that 'no' means 'yes' if you know how to spot it?" Wikipedia
Now he’s sharing a fantasy about how the Donner Party survived by eating the dead. Limbaugh first published this on his website:
COVID-19 is too convenient an excuse for a generation of people to just punt. We don’t do this. We are Americans. In the Spanish flu, ’17, ’18, ’19, 1917, much death. Do you know that there was not one mention of it by the president of the United States at the time, Woodrow Wilson? Never talked about it. There was no national policy to deal with it. There was no shutdown. There was just, “Hey, go outside, get some fresh air, stand in the sun as long as you can, get some vitamin D, feel better.”
It had numerous waves to it. It coincided with World War I, which is what Woodrow Wilson’s concern was. Soldiers going off to war arguably spread one of the waves. But there was no “woe is us.” It was just the next in a long line of things that happened to people that they dealt with, like the Donner party. You’ve heard of the Donner party. Maybe some of you haven’t.
The Donner party, the Donner family and a bunch of travelers trying to get to California over the Sierra Nevada mountain range. They made the mistake of trying to make the trip in the middle of winter. We’re talking the Lake Tahoe region. They get to the peak. It was so bad that they had to turn to cannibalism to survive. That’s what’s noteworthy about the Donner party.
If you read the diaries written by the leaders of the Donner party, the only reference to how cold it was was one sentence: “It was a particularly tough winter.” It’s just what was. They didn’t complain about it because there was nothing they could do. They had to adapt. This is what’s missing. There seems to be no concept of adaptation. There seems to be no understanding in the Millennial generation that we can adapt to this and that we’re gonna have to. Because there’s nothing stopping it right now.
The story then was picked up elsewhere. For example on HUFFPOST:
Rush Limbaugh Gets Extra Weird, References Cannibalism In Coronavirus Rant — The right-wing radio host brought the grim story of the Donner party into the picture for some reason.
Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday said that cannibalism is just a way of adapting and that Americans had better adapt to the coronavirus.
Limbaugh, who previously said the COVID-19 infection was just the common cold, called the response to the pandemic “un-American.” He also compared the situation to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19, saying then-President Woodrow Wilson never mentioned it.
Media Matters has a video of the segment.
The Chicago Turbine titles its snarky column by Rex Huppke:
“Rush Limbaugh says we should face COVID-19 like the Donner Party - so I’m going to eat him.”
As a true American super-patriot, I am unafraid of the coronavirus. Neither the threat of death nor the death of 138,000 fellow citizens will stop me from living a purely American, not-afraid-of-nothing life.
That’s why I plan to do my patriotic duty and eat conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.
I assume the liberals out there cowering under their beds — what’s the matter, libs, afraid a little highly contagious respiratory disease with possible lifelong adverse health effects might get ya? — are wondering why I would be craving a slice of Limbaugh meat.
Well, it’s simple. Unlike you soy-loving sheeple, I listen to Limbaugh, and he told methere’s nothing more American than cannibalism.
Huppke concludes:
As an avid Limbaugh listener, I can think of nothing that would make me more American than to eat the man who, about 138,000 American deaths ago, bravely compared COVID-19 to the common cold.
I will not let fear turn me into a lazy liberal waiting for a government handout.
No, I will stand strong, with an American flag proudly waving, and serve my family a cut of marbled Limbaugh flank that would make my favorite radio host proud.
As he said Tuesday: “Life has to go on. Life is to be lived. It’s not meant to be spent cowering and curled up in the corner in fear.”
More from Huppke:
Here’s a refresher from an essay about the Donner Party: “The Donner Party was a group of American settlers heading to California who became stranded in heavy snows in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846. Isolated in horrific conditions, about half of the original group of nearly 90 people died of starvation or exposure. Some of the survivors turned to cannibalism in order to survive.” The Donner Party, Ill-Fated Group of Settlers Headed to California — Stranded in Snow Turned to Cannibalism
It is noteworthy that the members of the group didn’t merely eat people who died:
…the hiking party included a pair of Indians named Salvador and Luis, both of whom had joined up with the Donner emigrants shortly before they became snowbound. The natives refused to engage in cannibalism, and Salvador and Luis later ran off out of fear that they might be murdered once the others ran out of meat. Indeed, when the duo was found days later, exhausted and lying in the snow, a hiking party member named William Foster shot both of them in the head. The Indians were then butchered and eaten by the hikers. It was the only time during the entire winter that people were murdered for use as food. Reference
This is how a warped mind thinks. I mean, who even has the story of the Donner Party story in their frame of reference when thinking of the Covid-19 crisis?
It’s a rhetorical question.
The answer is someone as callous as Donald Trump who is more knowledgeable about history than a president who doesn’t read (although there was a movie). The only thing that surprises me is that Limbaugh didn’t also reference the story of how the survivors of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 which crashed in the Andes also survived by eating those who died. (There was also a movie, Alive, about that.)
I have a modest Swiftian proposal Limbaugh might approve of for families who can't work because of the pandemic and are having trouble feeding their children.
The Poll: Here’s what the Bible says about cannibalism.