By now, most readers are familiar with the quote Limbaugh made in January on his radio program that by conservative estimates reaches 12 million listeners daily. “I want him [Obama] to fail.” The phrase has been reiterated multiple times on the major cable news channels, in any number of newsprint editorials, and repeated across the airwaves in critical ads such as those from AmericansUnitedforChange.org.
The Backlash
Most of the pundit commentary has centered on those now-famous five words, “I want him to fail.” The quote has been called divisive and spoken in the spirit of partisanship as this quote from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews illustrates, “Up next, does Rush Limbaugh hate this country? Wait till you hear what he said about the new president. He wants him to fail. What an amazing-, I've never heard anybody say they wanted a new president to fail. Usually you want the new president to succeed and then later on you argue the politics of what he or she does. But to want them to fail at the outset? What's that about?” Even White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs joined the fray after Rush Limbaugh’s keynote speech to the CPAC conference: “I think it would be charitable to say he doubled down on what he said in January in wishing and hoping for economic failure in this country.”
But the radio superstar sits behind his self-proclaimed “Golden EIB (Excellence in Broadcasting) Microphone” for three hours a day. For Limbaugh to have garnered such harsh criticism, even from the government itself, surely there must have been more than one line of dissenting rhetoric. Why, given the backlash, one must assume the Rush Limbaugh Show spews blind hatred for the Obama Administration nonstop from noon to three!
However, much like the tabloids in the checkout line, there exists a dichotomy between the news headlines of the day and the hard facts of reality. As politicians are so fond of telling the public, a person’s words can often be taken out of context. With that being the standard so graciously afforded to those elected officials who “misspeak,” it is prudent in the interest of equality and fairness that Mr. Limbaugh be judged by the same scale.
The Offending Comment
Now the quote in question was part of a much larger monologue where Limbaugh commented on a publication’s request for him to write 400 words on his hopes for the Obama presidency. While certainly not the whole of Limbaugh’s several minute discussion of the subject, the surrounding commentary reads thus: “Look, what he's [Obama’s] talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don't want this to work. So I'm thinking of replying to the guy, ‘Okay, I'll send you a response, but I don't need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.’ (interruption) What are you laughing at? See, here's the point. Everybody thinks it's outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, "Oh, you can't do that." Why not? Why is it any different, what's new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it?”
It becomes apparent when looking at this larger block of text, that Limbaugh’s desire is not to see the Obama Presidency abysmally lead the country into turmoil. But that has not deterred the creation of public service announcements that call for the radio host’s exile from the Republican Party, announcements which do not expound upon the commentary any further than simply: “I want him to fail.”
Still, the words were spoken, and if they were not rooted in shear anti-Obama sentiment, the free-thinking and fair-minded individual is therefore forced to ask, “Why did he say them?”
Kevin Moore - Kevin Moore is a student at the University of Toledo and an aspiring novelist. As of late, his work has focused primarily on revising the ...
