a retraction, da-da-da-da-da-da-da

Yesterday I picked up a bit from 28bytes where he mentioned Rush Limbaugh had joined the club of conservatives who are blaming the victims of the VT shootings for being too soft in today's politically correct climate (oh, honestly, we haven't been "politically correct" since about 1994, when the term lost all meaning and became the best strawman argument a conservative blowhard ever had) and because of that, they couldn't up and bumrush the VT shooter as he rampaged through the school. When I scoured Rush's site yesterday to find a link to the quote, I found that show transcripts are published a day behind. But still, armed with enough fodder for a right good snort of satire, I went ahead and, yakkita yakkita yakkita, punched out a good enough piece that I still think is pretty darn good for all its hyperbole (come on, you have to admit, "Collateral damage is a liberal myth" is great. I'll have to use it again at some point.)

However, I've gone back this morning to read the transcript of yesterday's Rush Limbaugh show to find the corroborating quote and... well, I came up blank. Rush doesn't share the neocon viewpoint; in fact, he pretty much downplays it so that he may better blame political correctness. Here's the closest he gets to it:

You people (and you know who you are), I'm getting e-mails from you, some of you have called, and you're lamenting the "soft structure" of the American child these days, the American young person. "Why didn't they gang tackle this guy? Why didn't they just overpower this guy once he started firing!" Everybody's got their theories, and one of the most common theories that I'm hearing in my e-mail and on the phones here is that, "Come on, Rush! From kindergarten on they're taught conflict resolution. 'Don't offend anybody. Don't make anybody mad, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.' Well, what is that if not political correctness," and it may be a factor. You don't really know.

Rush goes on to state that people were too PC to take preventative action against the kid because, among other things, he was Asian and therefore everybody was afraid of being called a racist if they confronted him. But that's a whole nother kettlecan of wormfish altogether. 28bytes and I now both realize Rush said "Why didn't they tackle this guy?" with quotation marks around it. And, as context is key, I surely can't call him out on an opinion he didn't expressly say was his.

However, as other LJ friends have linked, there are plenty of people around, National Review readers and the like, who do hold the opinion. Here's John Derbyshire's take on how they could have "[counted] the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands."

It's oh-so-easy to sit safely at your keyboard and explain at length how you would have gone all hero on the situation. Happens all the time on the Something Awful forums, f'rinstance. Whenever there's a shooting or a carjacking or kidnapping or some kind of nasty story brought to the collective attention of the forums, a certain subset of Internet Males always feel the need to pipe up and say "Wuss! I would have karate-chopped the perp and then totally kicked him in the head!" and the like. And honestly, that was the point of the hyperbolic satire yesterday, not the fact that Limbaugh was a fathead. And as much fun as it is to mock him, it's no fair to mock him for something he didn't say. I'd rather accurately take aim than flail about wildly.

So I've gone and edited Rush out of the piece. But, as Horatio K. Boomer would say, I do so with a slight pang of regret, because using "Neocon Tough Guy" instead of Rush Limbaugh weakens the point considerably. No longer is there an actual person to quote. Not even John Derbyshire's viewpoint is worth using as an epigram. Instead, unfortuntely, all we have is Mr. Figurehead to mock -- and if you look closely, you can see the pieces of straw falling out of his bulletproof vest.

Even so, I'm still quite proud of "No, yippie-kai-yay YOU!"