Gene Lyons
October, 22, 2003
Bush Bizarro World
Either Rush Limbaugh's housekeeper has been doping my morning
coffee, or we are living in Bizarro World. If you don't recall the old
DC comics, Bizarro World was created accidentally by the mad scientist
Lex Luthor in a futile quest to clone Superman for evil purposes.
Bizarro Superman turned out to have most of the Man of Steel's powers,
but none of his intelligence.
Greenish in hue and speaking pidgin English like Tarzan or George
W. Bush, he showed up at the Daily Planet and began stalking Lois Lane.
Needless to say, the real Superman defeated his rival in aerial combat,
although Bizarro World adventures became a continuing theme, a distorted
mirror image of the caped crusader's preferred reality of "Truth,
Justice and the American Way."
So has Lex Luthor cloned the GOP? The State Department's battling
the Pentagon over Iraq, the CIA's at war with the White House over who
leaked a covert operative's identity, Rush Limbaugh's a junkie, a
steroid-enhanced masher's governor of California, a three-star general's
making speeches claiming that God appointed George W. Bush to fight a
Holy War against Satan's Islamic allies, and what's the big problem
worrying conservative pundits?
Why a scourge of irrational "Bush-haters." Columinists at the New
York Times and Washington Post have advanced to the Bizzaro World notion
that people who think Bush lies a lot are the equivalent of crackpots
who wrote best-selling books and peddled videos portraying Bill Clinton
as a drug dealer and serial murderer.
But let's forget the serious stuff and have some fun with sex,
drugs, and Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, shall we?
Spare me the crocodile tears about poor Rush Limbaugh, OK? Here's
a guy who's become a multi-millionaire celebrity by masquerading as Mr.
Personal Responsibility and mocking the weaknesses of others. No sooner
had Limbaugh been forced to admit he was addicted to prescription
pain-killers--Schedule II narcotics, incidentally, like heroin and
cocaine--than his own words got thrown in his face.
The answer to harsh prison terms given African-Americans, Limbaugh
argued, wasn't mercy. "Too many whites are getting away with trafficking
in this stuff," he said. "The answer to this disparity is not to start
letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who
are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are
getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too."
Discussing an NBA player's drug problems on TV, Limbaugh once said
that experts be damned, "I don't buy into the disease part of drug
abuse. The first time you reach for a substance you are making a
choice."
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