by Molly Ivins
I wouldn’t say that dittoheads, as a group, lack the ability to reason. It’s just that whenever I run across one, he seems to be at a low ebb in reasoning skills. Poor ol’ Bill Sarpalius, one of our dimmer Panhandle congressmen, was once trying to explain to a town hall meeting of his constituents that Limbaugh was wrong when he convinced his listeners that Bill Clinton’s tax package contained a tax increase on the middle class. (It increased taxes only on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.) A dittohead in the crowd rose to protest: “We don’t send you to Washington to make responsible decisions. We send you there to represent us.”
The kind of humor Limbaugh uses troubles me deeply, because I have spent much of my professional life making fun of politicians. I believe it is a great American tradition and should be encouraged. We should all laugh more at our elected officials—it’s good for us and good for them. So what right do I have to object because Limbaugh makes fun of different pols than I do?
I object because he consistently targets dead people, little girls, and the homeless—none of whom are in a particularly good position to answer back. Satire is a weapon, and it can be quite cruel. It has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful. When you use satire against powerless people, as Limbaugh does, it is not only cruel, it’s profoundly vulgar. It is like kicking a cripple.
On his TV show, early in the Clinton administration, Limbaugh put up a picture of Socks, the White House cat, and asked, “Did you know there’s a White House dog?” Then he put up a picture of Chelsea Clinton, who was thirteen years old at the time and as far as I know had never done any harm to anyone.
When viewers objected, he claimed, in typical Limbaugh fashion, that the gag was an accident and that without his permission some technician had put up the picture of Chelsea—which I found as disgusting as his original attempt at humor.
On another occasion, Limbaugh put up a picture of Labor Secretary Robert Reich that showed him from the forehead up, as though that were all the camera could get. Reich is indeed a very short man as a result of a bone disease he had as a child. Somehow the effect of bone disease in children has never struck me as an appropriate topic for humor.
The reason I take Rush Limbaugh seriously is not because he’s offensive or right-wing, but because he is one of the few people addressing a large group of disaffected people in this country. And despite his frequent denials, Limbaugh does indeed have a somewhat cultlike effect on his dittoheads. They can listen to him for three and a half hours a day, five days a week, on radio and television. I can assure you that David Koresh did not harangue the Branch Davidians so long nor so often. But that is precisely what most cult leaders do—talk to their followers hour after hour after hour.
A large segment of Limbaugh’s audience consists of white males, eighteen to thirty-four years old, without college education. Basically, a guy I know and grew up with named Bubba.
Bubba listens to Limbaugh because Limbaugh gives him someone to blame for the fact that Bubba is getting screwed. He’s working harder, getting paid less in constant dollars, and falling further and further behind. Not only is Bubba never gonna be able to buy a house, he can barely afford a trailer. Hell, he can barely afford the payments on the pickup.
And because Bubba understands he’s being shafted, even if he doesn’t know why or how or by whom, he listens to Limbaugh. Limbaugh offers him scapegoats. It’s the “feminazis.” It’s the minorities. It’s the limousine liberals. It’s all these people with all these wacky social programs to help some silly, self-proclaimed bunch of victims. Bubba feels like a victim himself—and he is—but he never got any sympathy from liberals.
Psychologists often tell us there is a great deal of displaced anger in our emotional lives—your dad wallops you, but he’s too big to hit back, so you go clobber your little brother. Displaced anger is also common in our political life. We see it in this generation of young white men without much education and very little future. This economy no longer has a place for them. The corporations have moved their jobs to Singapore. Unfortunately, it is Limbaugh and the Republicans who are addressing the resentments of these folks, and aiming their anger in the wrong direction.
In my state, I have not seen so much hatred in politics since the heyday of the John Birch Society in the early 1960s. In those days, you couldn’t talk politics with a conservative without his getting all red in the face, arteries standing out in his neck, wattles aquiver with indignation—just like a pissed-off turkey gobbler. And now we’re seeing the same kind of anger again.
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting has a sweet, gentle faith that truth will triumph in the end, and thinks it is sufficient to point out that Limbaugh is wrong. I say it’s important to point out that he’s not just wrong but that he’s ridiculous, one of the silliest people in America. Sure, it takes your breath away when he spreads some false and vicious rumor, such as the story that Vincent Foster’s body was actually discovered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton. Or when he destroys an important lobby-control bill by falsely claiming that it would make the average citizen subject to lobbying laws. Yes, that’s sick and perverse.
But it’s important to show people that there is much more wrong with Limbaugh’s thinking than just his facts. Limbaugh specializes in ad hominem arguments, which are themselves ridiculously easy to expose. Ted Kennedy says, “America needs health-care reform.” Limbaugh replies, “Ted Kennedy is fat.”
Rush Limbaugh’s pathetic abuse of logic, his absurd pomposity, his relentless self-promotion, his ridiculous ego—now those, friends, are appropriate targets for satire.
May/June 1995
Phil Gramm I
MIAMI, FLA. — the most curious part of the story about Phil Gramm and the savings and loan owner is not the cupidity but the stupidity. Whatever one may have thought of Senator Gramm previously, dumb was not a word that sprang to mind. But to be helping an S&L owner to whom one was indebted in 1989—after Jim Wright’s fall, after the Keating Five, after the whole damn thing had blown wide open—leads us to suspect that our Phil is, well, no rocket scientist.
Gramm, of course, maintains that the aid he provided Jerry Stiles, who did $53,000 worth of free work on Gramm’s vacation home, was “routine,” and, one would gather, perfunctory. And the freebie itself was motivated only by Senator Gramm’s noble desire to provide work for unemployed Texans.
Generosity of interpretation is in the eye of the beholder. Can’t wait to hear what Jim Wright has to say about it. Dickie Flatt, too.
My quarrel with Gramm stems not from anything he may have done that was illegal, or at best unethical, but rather from his Business As Usual MO Gramm, spouting his right-wing populism, went to the Senate and promptly fell into the most advanced patterns of legal extortion—to wit, collecting political action committee money like a panhandling fool.
I grant you the fault is not Gramm’s, but the system’s. On the other hand, he has consistently voted against every effort to reform the despicable system of legalized bribery masquerading as campaign contributions that has corrupted the entire political process.
For at least one year, he was the Senate cham-peen PAC money collector, and he’s always right near the top. Lately, as chairman of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, he’s become even more aggressive at scooping up lobby money for his party.
As a member of the Senate Banking Committee, Gramm earned a perfect goose egg—a big, fat zero rating—from the Campaign for Financial Democracy, the S&L watchdog organization.
Gramm’s other, less loveable tricks are well known to his colleagues. “Grammstanding” is what his colleagues in the Texas congressional delegation call it when Gramm, having fought some nice goodie for a Texas town—say a new post office for East Boot—then rushes out when the thing is finally approved, despite his vote, to announce it and claim credit for it.
Another favorite Gramm trick is to vote for projects that will help Texas and then to vote against appropriating mo
ney for them, so he can retain his reputation as a fiscal watchdog and deficit buster. This ancient and dishonorable legislative practice is usually described by a word beginning with chicken.
All in all, I’ve no quarrel with Phil Gramm’s performance as a standard-issue, right-wing Republican carrying water for big-money special interests. That, one should expect. But his pose as a friend of the “little man” has always annoyed me.
An ancillary matter reflecting no particular discredit on Gramm, but again on the system as a whole, is the nonperformance of the Senate Ethics Committee. Under what bizarre stretch of logic did they conclude that $53,000 of free work on a vacation home was not a gift under the Senate rules. Clearly, the Senate rules police need their heads examined.
While on the subject of idiotic Senate rules, or lack thereof, note the current flap over alleged sexual harassment by Senator Bob Packwood. The new women senators have vowed to strengthen Senate rules against sexual harassment. I have a better idea. Why doesn’t the Senate put itself under the same laws against sexual harassment they passed for everyone else in the country? Eh?
December 1992
Phil Gramm II
ITHINK IT PROVES there is a God,” said one Texas liberal of Senator Phil Gramm’s presidential campaign, which is going nowhere fast. Gloating is in violation of the liberal creed, which calls for compassion at all times, especially for those who are getting kicked around. On the other hand, we are talking about Phil Gramm.
The New Republic pronounced him “profoundly amoral, committed only to his own political advancement, ruthless in getting his way and untrustworthy in accounting for his actions.” That pretty much sums up the press reaction to our boy Phil so far. And we are not talking about “the liberal media” here. Mean, heartless, amoral, ruthless, and calculating are words that have appeared in profiles of Gramm across the board.
Public reaction, as measured in various polls, hovers around 9 percent support from Republicans nationally. His presidential campaign is already a standard joke; there are several variations on “the candidate for those who think Bob Dole is not mean enough.”
Of course, I would no more write off Phil Gramm at this point than I would get near a wounded rattler. At one of his many extremely profitable money-raising soirees earlier this year, Gramm quoted Ben Franklin’s line that a man can have but three reliable friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money. Gramm went on to say that he has a young wife, an old dog, and “Thanks to you and your support tonight, I have the most reliable friend that you can have in American politics, and that is ready money.”
The dread words John Connally do occur, do they not? (For those who have forgotten, Connally, always a boardroom favorite, ran for president in 1980, spent $6 million, and got one delegate.)
Nevertheless, Gramm is sitting on one of the biggest campaign kitties in history, off to a flying start with $5 million “left over” from his Senate campaign and augmented by more millions collected since ($4.1 million at one event in February—a world record). Gramm, twice the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is familiar with almost every big giver in politics. He received more money from medical and insurance interests opposed to President Clinton’s health-care reforms than any other member of Congress. With his characteristic kindness, he said of health-care reform: “We have to blow up this train and the rails and trestle and kill everyone on board.”
But Gramm’s single largest special-interest donor group continues to be oil and gas. During a discussion of pending legislation, a reporter recently suggested to Gramm that the bill under discussion would help natural gas companies but hurt homeowners. Gramm replied, “Any policy has winners and losers.”
One of the most telling things about Phil Gramm is that those who know him best like him least. One of the safest bets in Washington for years now has been who would win a secret Senate poll for Most Disliked Member. Gramm’s inevitable response is: “I didn’t come to Washington to be loved, and I haven’t been disappointed.” One member of Congress who has dealt with him describes him as “pond slime,” which is pretty much the general reaction.
The word grammstanding comes from the man’s notorious habit of claiming credit for work he didn’t do; some lowly Texas lawmaker will toil away for months to get a post office or a factory or some modest piece of pork for his district, only to find that Gramm, who never helped and often hurt the effort, has sprung forth with a news release claiming credit for same.
So far, Gramm’s presidential campaign has netted him (a) publicity about an ill-fated 1974 investment in a dirty movie with his then brother-in-law (Gramm has denied knowledge of the nature of the film, although the ex-brother-in-law insists that he knew); (b) publicity about his own “Willie Horton,” an ex-drug dealer whom Gramm’s office helped spring from prison with unhappy results (again, Gramm says he knew nothing of the episode, despite some evidence that he did); and (c) renewed publicity about the Jerry Stiles case.
Stiles was a savings and loan rip-off artist who cost the taxpayers $200 million. He was convicted last year on eleven counts of conspiracy, bank bribery, and misapplication of funds. In 1987, Stiles advanced Gramm $117,000, interest-free, for renovation of Gramm’s vacation home on the Eastern Shore. Three months after the work was finished, Stiles billed Gramm $63,433. Gramm had been pushing legislation that would have helped Stiles’ failing S&Ls. By 1989, when Stiles was in big trouble with federal regulators, Gramm urged the regulators to go gently on Stiles and to consider his pleas for help and waivers from federal rules.
Rather than gloating about Gramm’s foundering campaign, I think we should consider some of the troubling questions that this raises about Texas politics and Texas voters. Why is it that we have elected and reelected a man so unpleasant that his own colleagues can’t stand him and whose record in politics disqualifies him for higher office? The question is not what’s wrong with Phil Gramm, but what’s wrong with us.
July 1995
Phil Gramm III
WOULD A BLEEDING-HEART liberal kick a guy while he’s down? Should a girl like I, in whom the milk of human kindness flows copiously for everyone, from protein-shy Hottentots to the glandular obese, actually aim a few swift boots at the prone form of Senator Phil Gramm? Nah. But it’s tempting.
We liberals do sometimes forsake our vows of compassion for all mankind. I recall publicly gloating about the defeat of some of the noxious fat-heads Texas used to send to Congress. But hell, I even felt sorry for Richard Nixon when he left. There’s nothing you can do about being born liberal—fish gotta swim, and hearts gotta bleed.
From the Texas Democratic point of view, it’s a shame that Gramm didn’t stay in at least through New Hampshire and spend himself broke. Now, he’ll just come home and clobber whoever the Democrat is with his leftover millions.
It’s hard to write about Gramm without sounding mean; the national reporters’ favorite line was, “Even his friends don’t like him.” The most touching story I ever heard about Gramm was from a fellow senator who used to tell Gramm: “You’ll never be president, Phil, because you’ve got no heart.”
For some reason, Gramm, who has more than amply demonstrated his indifference to what his colleagues think of him, took this guy seriously. For years afterward, whenever he’d done anything that remotely smacked of compassion, he’d come up to this senator and say: “Whatta ya think, whatta ya think—am I showing heart yet?”
Well, it is sort of touching.
From the point of view of the rest of the country, Texas and Phil Gramm must look like Enid and Joe Waldholtz. Most people keep asking, “But what did she ever see in him?” while the kinder ones reply, “She must have married him for money. Give her a little credit—it couldn’t have been love.”
What can we say? We keep electing the guy by two-digit percentage margins, and in the rest of the country, he can’t buy his way out of single digits with $20 million. And that’s just Republicans.
He may be a schmuck, bu
t at least he’s our schmuck? (I always think of him as a schmuck from Georgia, but then, I don’t like him.)
I suppose we could just blame him on the Aggies, but I think that’s some kind of “ist”—universityist? While Austin snores along in its false sense of superiority, Texas A&M has in fact become a great university. I’m not suggesting that we ban Aggie jokes as politically incorrect, but let’s at least recognize reality.
My real problem with Phil Gramm is ill-timed; it’s the wrong season to make this case, but I’ll try anyway. Set aside that I don’t agree with him about anything. I don’t agree with Representative Charlie Stenholm, a Blue Dog Democrat, about anything either. But you notice that Stenholm and the rest of the Blue Dogs have been sweating like farm workers to find a compromise on the budget impasse in Washington. They understand that compromise is necessary.