Matt Yglesias

Cantor vs Limbaugh, Nazi Analogies

Should we start the clock on how long it takes Eric Cantor to apologize?

“The Republican Party in its roots is a party of inclusion and we ought to be promoting that and making sure that voices are heard,” Cantor, of Virginia, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing today.

Cantor, when asked about Limbaugh’s comments that “Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate” and his comparison of the administration’s health-care logo to a swastika, said Limbaugh was wrong.

“Do I condone the mention of Hitler in any discussion about politics?” Cantor said. “No, I don’t, because obviously that is something that conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”

I wonder if that applies to members of the conservative grassroots who analogize health care reform to concentration camps? There’s research which indicates that diverse groups make better decisions than homogeneous ones. And I think the fact that the one Jewish Republican in congress can see that there’s a problem here, despite being a stone-cold right-winger, illustrates some of the issue. Put that guy in the room, and there’s someone to raise a note of caution. But in a lot of rooms, there’s no one from outside the pretty narrow circle of middle-aged white male goyim who dominate the party and that brings with it a certain loss of perspective. That’s a good enough demographic for a popular radio show, but it’s not big enough for a political party.

Racism vs Reverse Racism

Rush Limbaugh thinks Sonia Sotomayor is a “hack” and worse, “Here you have a racist — you might want to soften that, and you might want to say a reverse racist.”

This seems very confused. Being a “reverse racist” can’t be similar to being a “racist,” it needs to be the reverse of being a racist. Limbaugh clearly just thinks Sotomayor is a racist. She hates white people. For a Latina to hate white people isn’t “reverse” racism, it’s racism. Reverse racism would be if you had a white person who hates white people. It would be like racism, where you hate people of other races, but in reverse.

At any rate, I’ve made this point a million times, but it’s fascinating to me the kind of double standard conservatives apply to these issues. You never hear Rush Limbaugh decrying everyday racism against non-whites in the United States. You never hear him recounting an anecdote about an African-American man having trouble hailing a cab or being followed by a shopkeeper. He doesn’t do stories about how people with stereotypically “black” names suffer job discrimination. He doesn’t bemoan the fact that the United States has an aircraft carrier named after a fanatical segregationist. Which is fine. Everyone’s interested in some things and not in others. Rush isn’t interested in racism. Except that like most conservatives, he’s actually very interested in allegations of racial discrimination against white people. He sees the defense of white interests as integral to his political mission. And he hates identity politics.

Rush Rules Their World

It’s pathetic to see conservative politicians repeatedly bowing and scraping and apologizing after offering criticism of the Great Leader Rush Limbaugh, but for a true measure of Rush’s influence look at what happens after Cato’s Jerry Taylor offers some criticism of Limbaugh at the Corner. All hell breaks loose. Katherine Jean-Lopez attacks Taylor. Mark Steyn rebuts that she “should have been harder on Jerry Taylor’s post.” Taylor defends himself then K-Lo fires back expressing shock that anyone would dare accuse a talk radio host of at times deploying invalid arguments* while Rich Lowry agrees that Rush is wrong about stuff but insists that he should be immune from criticism anyway. K-Lo, back for more, gushes that Rush has a large audience so everyone had better get in line.

Conor Friedersdorf has a good response on the merits, but I just find the whole thing kind of mind-boggling. Rush’s defenders understand, I hope, that painting Rush as the all-powerful lord of conservatism before whom all else must submit was, in its origins, a political strategy devised by their enemies, right? So why are they jumping so quickly to prove that the argument is dead-on?

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The Asymmetry of Waterboarding Jokes

My understanding of the White House Correspondents Association dinner concept, insofar as I grasp it, is that the host comedian is supposed to make jokes at the president’s expense. Thus, insofar as Wanda Sykes seems to have primarily been making jokes at the expense of the president’s political adversaries I think there’s ample grounds for complaint. But I don’t think this from Brendan Nyhan can stand unchallenged:

The hypocrisy here is staggering (especially in the Media Matters case). Imagine that a conservative comedian had accused Keith Olbermann of treason at the WHCA dinner back in 2004 and said he should be waterboarded. Would liberals have minimized the comments as “jokes” and catalogued all the offensive things Olbermann has said on his show? I don’t think so.

But these aren’t symmetrical cases. Jokes advocating that conservative proponents of waterboarding should be subjected to waterboarding make a real political point, namely that this practice the right dismisses as “dunking” is, in fact, horrifying torture. The point of the joke is that this would be clear enough to Limbaugh if it was done to him. A comparable case, I guess, is if a conservative comedian were to say “if Keith Olbermann likes higher taxes on the wealthy so much, then he should have to pay higher income taxes, too!” But I don’t think Olbermann or his fans would find that particularly stinging since I take it he already understands the basic implications of Obama’s tax policies.

To circle back around, the WHCA thing is an appalling farce and honestly I don’t think anyone should participate in it on any level. But it’s one redeeming feature is that it holds out the prospect of someone making fun of the President of the United States, to his face, surrounded by a big audience of people. It can be a little bit of a rare truth to power moment. As a host, if you’re not going to do that there’s really no point.