Or, Beans for Me, Please
No, I don’t mean hurry to get dessert. I mean save rush for dessert. When I clarify further that I mean save Rush Limbaugh for dessert—for compote, a custard, a tart, mousse, or best of all, a raspberry bombe—fans and foes alike will demur. Common sense dictates so meaty a morsel be trussed and mounted on a spit. Or at least packed tightly beneath a thick layer of dough as a hefty ersatz for pork pie. But that would be missing my point, which I must excuse, because I haven’t made it yet. I will. But first let me backtrack.
Some debaters want a touchstone; I require flint. Sparks flying during discussions convince me truth has been tapped. For that I lock horns with my dearest adversary whose opinions are diametrically opposed to mine. I give him enough credit to believe he will not spout the same vulgar tripe as last time; he returns the honor by believing I won’t. Our infrequent matches—we only joust on biggie topics: economics, politics, free market, the environment—confirm that we both still do and sparks fly, the reason our engagements are only occasional.
My honorable excuse for tilting again and again at this—and I use the term affectionately—dimwit is to test-drive newly honed logic to see if that’ll convince him. He tilts right back because he is a pyromaniac and, I suspect, truly thinks he’s right, which is most annoying.
Just recently we were discussing, of all things, drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. My adversary was adamant: it was the only way to secure U.S. independence from terrorist Muslims, lower the price of gas (so everyone could drive around as much as ever), resurrect the economy, and preserve the great freedom of America, which exposes as dime-store stuff the puny freedoms enacted in sham democracies everywhere else in the world. But the Democrats blocked drilling. Why? Because they want the country to fail. When Bush was in, they wanted the country to fail to get Bush out. With Obama chief, they want the country to fail to make way for Socialism. Obama has a Muslim middle name, my adversary reminded me, but he didn’t mind that Obama was black. Not one little bit. In fact, he wanted to like Obama. He just couldn’t because he wouldn’t accept a Socialist Muslim ACORN-loving non-American as president. My adversary was not blind; hating Obama only demonstrated his patriotism. Which had gotten us far afield of drilling for oil in ANWR, but had warmed me nicely for my retort.
I observed that, according to the figures I had seen, if all proven oil and gas reserves in the U.S. were tapped and if U.S. production did not fall and consumption did not rise, the country would consume the energy from its own resources within 10 years, which however would not affect prices at the pump. I then cited the figures I had dug up and written down in preparation for just such a contest: the U.S. oil and natural gas reserves reported at the end of 2007.
My interlocutor bristled. The figures he saw were different.
Oh? I asked. What figures did he see? Mine came from Oilwatch Monthly, I told him, posted on the Internet.
He only repeated, rather brusquely, that the figures he saw were different.
What sources had he accessed? I persisted, disappointed to get stiff-armed this way after working so diligently to gather my facts. “I know there are discrepancies, for example, if you include biofuels—”
He cut me off. He didn’t remember where he saw the figures, but they were different.
In that moment I knew: He hadn’t seen them anywhere. They came from Rush. He listens to Rush the full three hours a day the man is broadcast, brain food bubble-gum style. Tuning in 15 hours a week to that man classifies as brainwashing in my book, except my adversary does it voluntarily, so I don’t know what to call it. Nor does my adversary listen to anything else because, having absorbed so much Rush, he believes all other sources lie. Upshot: it didn’t matter what figures I cited; he could confidently reject them because they led to a conclusion contradictory to Rush’s.
In that moment I also finally understood that discussion was pointless. Hecklers will say you can prove anything with statistics. You can. Stick a bunch of carrots into your statistical hat and pull out a rabbit. It can be amusing. However, statistics—data, measurements, analyses—are also the footpath along which sciences creep forward. Like guns, those numbers must be handled by responsible experts. Yes, I look the numbers up, jot them down, and spout them out when I have a reasonable excuse to do so (watch out), but I realize it’s a juvenile display. The numbers themselves don’t tell me anything and I can’t pretend they do, (which is one reason I think I forget them so quickly). I need reliable experts to help me interpret them. That’s my objection to Rush. He makes juvenile dashes into the numbers, grabs a few, shoves them into his statistical hat, and pulls out a substantiation.
But his substantiations are on hire. He dare not change them or his bellicose delivery. Not until 2016 anyway. That’s when his eight-year, $400-million contract runs out. Clear Channel Communications wants him doing exactly what he’s been doing to enthrall millions of listeners: conducting radio circus America. It’s raunchy, heats the blood like truth and passion, and gives listeners a cheap thrill, like they were throwing all those eggs themselves. They tune in every weekday to get their fix of vituperation. They are not to be disappointed.
To inform his listeners, Rush employs a novel use of figures. He grasps tid-bites—chaws of pseudo-information resembling scientific data, gives them a political polish, and slings them at his current target. I will give two examples only. They are brief, as Rush belabors foes, but not facts.
In one show, Rush cited the basic statistics that the U.S. represents 3% of the world’s population and consumes 25% of its energy. He implied the figures weren’t correct, but would accept them for the sake of his argument, which he delivered in his typically lusty and sprightly manner. However, if he—and his listeners—had spent a half hour visiting the UN Web site first, Rush’s delivery would not have been so zesty by half. Why? Because he would have seen for himself the figures for both, to wit: in 2005 the U.S. accounted for 4.5% of the world’s population, consumed 20% of the energy produced globally, and represented 21.6% of global energy consumption. Had he harbored a vigorous suspicion of UN loyalties, Rush could have turned to The World Almanac or accessed friendly, pedestrian Wikipedia. They list the statistics, too, but both often base their figures on the careful and thankless work the UN Statistics Division performs. However—and here’s the catch—salty Rush concluded his diatribe by saying he doesn’t believe the figures anyway. At this, listeners—my adversary included—rouse from their stupor, eyes sparkling. Ah! Rush doesn’t believe it, so they don’t have to remember it, because it’s not true. Now, that’s a tid-bite they can commit to memory, while those acquainted with the UN Statistics Division or The World Almanac or Wikipedia would rank Rush’s dismissal of the facts as pure balderdash, which in the 17th century, though no dessert, could be imbibed, conveying little substance, but known to go to one’s head.
More painful was a broadcast during which Rush broadsided environmental protection experts, foes certainly worthy of a million-dollar dump. Rush quoted an article that quoted a high-up executive of a giant oil company reported to have said that the off-shore drilling technology had become so good that of the 1,000 offshore wells destroyed during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, not one leaked. (In 2005, the Minerals Management Service reported that, indeed, neither Katrina nor Rita caused significant oil spills from wells on the outer continental shelf. Hurricane Ivan, however, did cause noteworthy offshore spills the year before.) In a typical ricochet maneuver, Rush proclaimed that environmentalists aren’t concerned with environmental damage; they just use it as their cover for attacking capitalism to cut the U.S. down to size. Ah. More brain food. Those tid-bites are indeed quick-draw material. Want to argue with Rush? Reach for the sky, partner.
Hence my caveat: Before we become Rush’s fractious circus mob, let’s do our bit as responsible members of the most powerful democracy in the world: conscientiously discriminate between news and views. Our dietary considerations have prepared us for this: Get lots of the former, partake sparingly of the latter.
News is hard to report impartially even after it’s been gathered, and just gathering it is an extremely difficult exercise that has gotten quite expensive. Let me remark here that the talented, hardworking, devoted professionals doing the legwork aren’t the ones getting the fancy salaries that now rival Rush’s. (Pity about the monumental pay checks the TV mouthers of the news industry today claim; it tends to discredit rather than validate.) Nevertheless, with news being as valuable and rare as it is in the best of cases, we should devote our efforts to identifying credible sources and getting as much of it as we can. The views—and there are many, many views—we can save for later. As we all know, after a good meal we often go easy on dessert and when we do choose to partake, we are much more particular about quality. Malted milk balls won’t do; jelly beans don’t tempt. It’s only when our eating habits are off that we tend to binge, which can leave us feeling kind of sick, but which can also kick in a wicked cycle of fatigue and euphoria if it becomes a habit. The problem is, for many of us it does.
Pass the spuds?