Crooks & Liars recalls Limbaugh's Jerry Garcia euology ("just another dead doper, a dirtbag")

[Amerigo Vespucci]

The Hate That Dare Not Speak Its Name
By Jon Perr Friday Jan 01, 2010 8:00am



http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/the-hate-that-dare-not-speak-its-name

Conservatives are apoplectic about some of the vile, hate-filled comments generated online in response to the hospitalization of Rush Limbaugh. And rightly so, as a quick glance at Twitter reveals. But before the right-wing faithful rush to condemn "liberal hate," they would do well to look in the mirror first. After all, theirs is a movement that in recent months prayed for the deaths of President Obama and two Democratic Senators.

On this point, Rush Limbaugh himself can speak from personal experience. Before he admitted his Oxycontin addiction, Limbaugh reacted to the death of Jerry Garcia by calling the musician a "dirtbag" and "just another dead doper." This March, Limbaugh happily predicted the ailing Ted Kennedy would be dead before the health care reform he championed ever became law:

"Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill."

After Kennedy's death, Limbaugh gloated over his prescience, "I predicted it, and I caught all kinds of grief for it out there."

Not, of course, from the 70,000 Tea Baggers who descended on Washington in December. Many proudly carried signs proclaiming, "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy."

But Ted Kennedy wasn't the only target of right-wing death wishes this year. Just days after several Republican Senators joined the usual suspects among the religious right in a "prayercast" to plead to the Almighty for the defeat of health care, Oklahoma's Tom Coburn on the eve of the Senate health care vote declared:

"What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can't make the vote tonight."

In response, Limbaugh's online allies at places like Free Republic assumed Coburn was referring to the 92 year old West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd and dutifully followed the call.

[MadMaddie]

1. What comes around goes around

kinda like a boomerang!!

[Amerigo Vespucci]

3. Al Franken's response to the Garcia comments, October 24, 2003:

Al Franken - October 24, 2003

Comedian; Author, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right



ADDRESS TO THE CLUB

Answers to Written Questions from the Floor:

Q: Rush Limbaugh: liberal compassion for a drug addict, or do we send him up the river?

A: First of all, I have to say that you have to have compassion for anyone who is addicted to drugs, but ... When Jerry Garcia died, Rush Limbaugh called him "just another dead doper" and a dirtbag. Anyone who knew Jerry knew that Jerry was, besides being an incredible musician and an incredible heart, a beautiful mind and the greatest guy. He said the same thing about Kurt Cobain. I don't know Darryl Strawberry, but he said that about him, too. He also said repeatedly that anyone who uses drugs illegally should be prosecuted and sent away. So yes, we should have compassion for Rush Limbaugh, but when he comes out of rehab, I fully expect Rush to take responsibility for his actions. Assuming that what is reported is true (and I don't know how you get addicted to these pills without getting them illegally), I think that he should, to set the right example, turn himself in, ask for the maximum sentence in the most violent prison. There are over 100,000 people in our prisons for possession; if this whole Limbaugh thing should do anything, it should make conservatives in this country reexamine our drug policies and the drug wars. The president, at the last State of the Union address, gave this terrific thing about mentoring kids whose parents are in prison. Well, a lot of them are in prison for drug offenses, and we should think about rehab and not sending people to prison for drug addiction. I hope, in all seriousness, that we can get past the personality of Rush Limbaugh and use this as an opportunity to really examine what our drug policies are, reexamine greater sentencing for crack than for powder cocaine, which is racist. We should really take a long, hard look and begin to have a sensible drug policy in this country.

[panader0]

2. Even if I had never heard of Rush

He'd be on my shit list for dissin' Garcia. What a mindless hypocrite. He couldn't carry Jerry's guitar pick.