<\/p>\n
With Rush Limbaugh having asserted his claim to be the true
\nand rightful leader of the Republican Party, it’s tempting to argue that he is,
\nin fact, the perfect embodiment for Republicans at this historical moment:
\nloud, boorish, corpulent and (if you’ll pardon my reference to an unfortunate physical
\nmalady) hard of hearing. Not to mention hypocritical. Let’s remember that
\nLimbaugh, together with his Republican cheerleaders in the Congress, opposed
\nthe economic stimulus bill because it was – you can’t make this up! – fiscally
\nirresponsible.<\/p>\n
What interests me more, however, is Limbaugh’s enduring
\npopularity among politically conservative evangelicals. I have no polling data
\nto back this up, only anecdotal evidence, but when I travel in evangelical
\nprecincts, or when I talk with my own brothers, the name of Rush Limbaugh evokes
\na kind of hushed reverence befitting the deity. He’s often quoted more
\nfrequently than the scriptures: “Rush says . . .” or, “According to Rush . . .
\n.”<\/p>\n
It’s an odd affinity, never mind the radical disjunction
\nbetween Limbaugh’s policy positions and the teachings of Jesus. The
\nthrice-married Limbaugh is hardly the avatar of “family values.” And he has
\nconfessed to an addiction to pain-killers, a habit he allegedly satisfied
\nthrough illegal means.<\/p>\n
So why the attraction? Some of it simply is a misguided
\nsympathy for right-wing politics. But that still doesn’t fully explain the
\nallegiance.<\/p>\n
Timothy Egan’s superb opinion piece on Limbaugh in the <\/a>New York Times<\/a> <\/i>has brought me to the But the evidence is beginning to mount. Several years ago I There are several legitimate ways to construe the Bob Jones Another bit of evidence for racism among politically Perhaps Limbaugh’s racial rants help to explain his <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With Rush Limbaugh having asserted his claim to be the true and rightful leader of the Republican Party, it’s tempting to argue that he is, in fact, the perfect embodiment for Republicans at this historical moment: loud, boorish, corpulent and (if you’ll pardon my reference to an unfortunate physical malady) hard of hearing. Not to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,375],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicals","category-race-2"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nreluctant conclusion that one reason politically conservative evangelicals so
\nadore Limbaugh is that he expresses the racism they feel but cannot allow
\nthemselves to articulate. I hasten to add that I don’t say this lightly; I have
\nfor years, in fact, defended evangelicals against the charge of racism.<\/p>\n
\nexposed what I call the “abortion myth,” the fiction that the Religious Right
\ncoalesced as a political movement in response to the 1973 Roe v. Wade<\/i> ruling. That emphatically was not the case; many
\nevangelicals at the time, in fact, applauded the decision. The true catalyst
\nwas a lower-court ruling, Green v.
\nConnally<\/i>, that upheld the Internal Revenue Service in its opinion that
\ninstitutions engaging in racial discrimination were not charitable
\norganizations and therefore had no claims to tax-exempt status. When the IRS
\nenforced that decision in 1976 and rescinded the tax exemption at Bob Jones
\nUniversity, a fundamentalist school in Greenville, South Carolina, evangelicals
\npreachers led by Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye and others banded together to form a
\nmighty political coalition.<\/p>\n
\ncase, and I have been careful in the past to present various mitigating
\ninterpretations. But the fact remains that the very people who eventually took
\nextraordinary pains to style themselves as the “new abolitionists” because of
\ntheir opposition to abortion actually organized as a political movement
\neffectively to defend racial segregation and discrimination at Bob Jones
\nUniversity.<\/p>\n
\nconservative evangelicals might be the popularity of home-schooling and their
\nsupport for school vouchers. Like it or not, evangelicals have yet to come to
\nterms with the legacy of “segregation academies,” many of them organized by
\nchurches, that sprouted after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education<\/i> ruling in 1954. Not everyone who
\neducates children at home is racist, of course. By no means. But one of the perennial Religious
\nRight complaints about public education is its emphasis on multiculturalism and
\ndiversity. And, as I saw when I visited public school and voucher school
\nclassrooms in Cleveland several years ago, nothing perpetuates racial (and
\neconomic) stratification better than voucher programs.<\/p>\n
\npopularity among politically conservative evangelicals after all. Such lines of
\naffinity are difficult to sort out, of course, especially when any such linkage
\nis vigorously denied – as I’m sure it will be. But when Limbaugh rails against
\nColin Powell, or when his program plays a parody called “Barack the Magic
\nNegro,” or when he suggests that the president is demanding that Americans
\n“have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever,
\nbecause his father was black, because this is the first black president” –
\nmaybe, just maybe, Limbaugh is striking an ugly nerve among politically
\nconservative evangelicals.<\/p>\n