After spending more than three straight days bullying Sandra Fluke and losing eight of his advertisers for the attacks, Rush Limbaugh finally issued a meager, quibbling apology today. Here is his ‘apology’s’ intro:
“For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke. I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line?”
Rush begins with a self-congratulatory statement as a backward way to remind the listener of his importance. He continues by saying that he made an error of word choice and didn’t intent to harm Sandra. Then, he continues along his original line of argumentation, restating the ideological line of thought that resulted in the personal attack on Sandra in the first place. He then pontificates about accountability. The real apology? We’re still waiting for it…
“If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?”
At this point, Rush descends into babbling and making false comparisons in an attempt, once again, to re-assert his argument. Is this ‘apology’ starting to look like another rant from an ego-maniac to you? You’re not the only one. After listening to all this nonsense, one wonders if Rush even has the capacity to make a full-hearted apology. And so we continue:
“In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone’s bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level.”
At this point, one has to comment on how disingenuous Rush is being here. He lead the attack on President Clinton’s own embarrassing personal/bedroom story. He talked for weeks and weeks about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Where was his sense of propriety then? But now it suddenly crops up when republicans are waging an all-out war to deny women reproductive freedom. Now we shouldn’t hear about how important those services are to women?
After listening to another monologue, it becomes obvious that Rush isn’t apologizing at all. He is simply using a fake apology as another platform from which to launch political attacks. Obviously, Rush’s statement isn’t worth listening to, since he’s using it in an angling and purely self-serving fashion. But since we started this, we might as well finish:
“My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.”
And at last we come to the ‘apology.’ By itself, it is pretty pathetic and lame. Like the apology of a man who is too egotistical ever to admit he’s wrong and needs such qualifiers as ‘my choice of words’ and ‘attempt to be humorous’ and ‘insulting choice of words.’ All these qualifiers serve only to distance himself from ‘I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke’ and further lessen these paltry six words — offering only a glimmer of contrition in a 150+ word self-congratulatory, political, and quibbling puff piece.
After such a vicious and long-lasting attack, this back-handed apology is hardly worthy of reply much less, acceptance.
UPDATE: Rush is once again escalating his attacks on Sandra Fluke saying her response to his ‘apology’ was ‘uncalled for.’
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