The Borking of Rush Limbaugh

Insinuate that an actor appearing on camera sporting the ravages of his disease agitating for the destruction of human embryos on the off chance he might somehow find relief for his affliction is worthy of criticism?

Not in Oprah's America, baby:

Let's look at a few recent examples. Limbaugh, sneered liberal media critic Neil Gabler the other night, is a "cancer to American discourse." (Gee, if Rush is a cancer what must Gabler think of Fox News -- his employer? Too much to stop the checks, one guesses.) Actress Heaton's taped opposition to Michael J. Fox's commercial, snarled baby boomer gossip Charlton, makes her "an embarrassment to evolved women." Said the gossip to the woman who thinks it a bad idea to entice low income women with big checks so their eggs can be removed, cloned, used, and destroyed: "Shame on you, Patricia. This sentiment isn't acceptable in progressive California." Not to be outdone is the always thoughtful Alec Baldwin, who sniffs Sunday in the New York Times that he should be Governor of New York because "I'm Tocqueville compared to Schwarzenegger."

Even funnyman David Letterman let what one must now presume to be his funny mask slip to reveal nothing more than another angry liberal baby boomer brimming with contempt as he spoke with his guest (guest!!!) Bill O'Reilly, the only remotely humorous thing said being "bonehead." Letterman has journeyed one long way from the heart of Indiana. Then there was the appalled tone of ABC's Kentucky-bred Diane Sawyer as she discussed the Limbaugh-Fox dustup, replete with the clucking disapproval of a now very liberal lady who lunches with the likeminded of Manhattan. There was even the buy-in of the basic anti-Limbaugh assumption from the normally sane Fox correspondent Douglas Kennedy as he discussed where Limbaugh got into "trouble."

Trouble with whom?

Neither Limbaugh nor Heaton are in trouble with a whole lot of people who are simply dismissed by those who, like professional borker and baby boomer Ralph Neas, shuttle between the coasts or gravitate mainly towards one of its major urban centers.

If Christopher Reeve had thought that swallowing baby brains would make him walk again, would criticizing his views have been beyond the pale?

No one is so heartless as to not empathize with the stricken, but the whole point of the debate is that destroying many human lives for the one-in-a-million chance that it will alleviate suffering for those few suffering from horrible afflictions is not a cost-free decision. There are consequences to this course of action which will last far longer than our emotional reaction to Michael J. Fox's muscle spasms.

I hope that Parkinson's disease is cured soon, and without the destruction of innocent life as its price.