Talk Radio

I'm an opinion and analysis junkie. As a result, I listen to talk radio by preference; besides, there's no classical music on the air where I live. I sure do wish there was.

Today, I heard two monumentally STUPID things on the air. The first was uttered by Rush Limbaugh. After the bottom of the hour break in the first hour, he asked a question he clearly thought was rhetorical: "What's the real downside to staying in Iraq?"

Gee, Rush, if you're an actual fiscal conservative, the words "tax burden" should just LEAP to mind, you know?

The more I listen to Rush, the more apt I find a description I saw put to him some time back: America's Top Republican Ward-Heeler. He's for the Republican Party and their position, whatever it may be. Anything one might have considered a political principle of his, such as cutting spending, gets dumped post haste if it happens to conflict with current Republican political goals. And thus his role is to be sure that all the Republican faithful accept the Republican party line, as though it were infalliable doctrine.

The other was a news item brought up by the local fella who follows Rush. He mentioned that the British National Curriculum is dropping all mention of Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Mohandes Ghandi, and Martin Luther King (Jr., presumably). No mention is made in the stories I found as to whether FDR, Neville Chamberlain, Charles de Gaulle, or Benito Mussolini rate a mention. The World Wars and the Shoah (Holocaust) have to be covered, by law; but how on earth are they going to ensure that students know who did it, when, and why, if the only people in history who MUST be mentioned are Abolitionists William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano?

I will be very much surprised (and disappointed) if Jewish groups and their friends do not rise up in collective apoplectic uproar over the complete and deliberate ignorance of history being foisted upon British school children. Methinks a home schooling movement may be in the offing there....