Racist Rush Limbaugh Disses Colin Powell; Fears Barack Obama Victory

[Black Star News Editorial]

Racist Rush Limbaugh is at it again.

He now accuses General Colin Powell, who is 100 times the man that Limbaugh will never be, of endorsing Senator Barack Obama simply because he's Black.

What about the tens of millions of Americans that clearly prefer Obama and have made him the front runner? Are they also endorsing Obama because he is Black? Clearly most of these American must be White, otherwise John McCain would be ahead.

Might they not see in Obama the transformative candidate who will lead this country away from the racist polarization, class divisions, and religious intolerance that prevents the United States from realizing its full potential?

So, if Powell also sees things similarly, should he be penalized because he is Black and Obama also happens to be African American? Using Limbaugh's warped logic, the millions of Whites that prefer Obama over McCain are just Black-man-lovers?

So, why is it that a man who spews hate and racism, like Rush Limbaugh, trembles about the prospects of a Senator Barack Obama victory? Because it affects him where it hurts the most; his wallet. Limbaugh draws an audience by playing up on people's fears, and that includes racism of course; the new politics represented by Obama would drive away his audience.

Senator Obama, by his soaring eloquence and steel-bending intellect, has already exploded the racist myths and stereotypes about Black people that helps keep people like Limbaugh in business; his audience must increasingly find it hard to believe that Black people are inherently unintelligent --Limbaugh does not belong in the same universe as Obama when it comes to intellect-- inherently lazy, and predicate criminals prone to drug dealing, thievery and other vices.

So when people want to find out why is it that the Federal government, in the ultimate act of socialism, has to bailout investment and commercial banks to the tune of $850 billion –counting the money already given to AIG— imagine how unconvincing it would sound if Limbaugh were to offer his standard responses such as "because there are too many illegal Mexicans in this country" or "because Black people are lazy."

So quite naturally, Limbaugh’s audience will start searching for more credible and persuasive explanations of their problems. There can be no doubt that Limbaugh has no solution to offer to our American and global 21st Century woes.

Who listens to Rush Limbaugh to understand why there's a credit crunch and why money is fleeing from stock markets?

Who listens to Limbaugh to understand the interconnectiveness of the global economy and how a cough on Wall Street affects all foreign economies?

Who listens to Limbaugh to understand that there's a need to do away with divisive false labels such as "liberals" and "conservatives" to marshal the collective will and energy needed to arrest the decline, distribute the shared burden --and yes, the national wealth-- in order to start rebuilding the economy?

Who listens to Rush Limbaugh to understand that unless we rebuild our schools and our roads and our infrastructure and create new jobs in green economies, the US will continue to slide and lose its global pre-eminence?

Limbaugh thrives on peddling fear; he is the worse kind of pimp in the world--a race pimp. He feasts on fears and disappointments of people who have lost their jobs while his Republican friends were busy shipping American jobs overseas and allowing financial bandits to run off with hundreds of billions of dollars in annual "bonuses" even while their firms' shares dropped and workers were laid off.

Rather than targeting the masterminds of this disaster, Limbaugh blames immigrants, especially Mexicans --including presumably the hapless nanny he used to send to buy his pills. He blames the poorest in our society, accusing them of being parasites of the state, when the true leeches were on Wall Street, milking the economy dry, without producing anything, except so-called derivatives, which is a fancy word for thin air.

Racism sells and has always sold and made people like Limbaugh very wealthy; it’s a divide-and-rule strategy that keeps the have-nots at each others throats while Limbaugh, who produces nothing but hate, carts a mountain of gold to the bank.

In fact, rather then falling for Limbaugh's con-job of portraying senator Obama as a "socialist" and General Powell --a genuine hero who risked his life and served this country in many conflicts, including in Vietnam and in the first Gulf War-- as some sort of racist because he endorsed Senator Obama, the Joe-the-plumbers of this country must start asking this question: Why is it that an eminently unintelligent and un-hard working man such as Limbaugh gets paid tens of millions of dollars for spewing hatred, racism and division, under the guise of "conservatism" while true Joe-the-plumbers risk losing their homes to foreclosure?

What skill –apart from pimping racism—does Limbaugh have to be entitled to such bounty?

The kind of transformative politics that Obama represents will sweep to the gutter hate-mongers such as Limbaugh.




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