Rush Limbaugh passed away a few weeks ago, and the radio legend has now been replaced.
By Erick Erickson, a name long-time readers of this blog will recognize.
Since Erickson’s announcement of his ascendance to Limbaugh’ seat at WSB in Atlanta, I had not seen a missive from him – unsurprising, since he’s also holding down another radio gig.
But this morning came a sadly confused and weasel worded mail, which is too bad because his second item, after a misguided attack on transgender person Elliot Page, is actually worth taking a peek at:
60 Minutes is going to cover people who “detransition,” that is they decide to revert back to their natural sex. Progressives are outraged that 60 Minutes would dare even touch the subject and the pre-spin is on that, for example, the only people who revert back are those who lack support.
The media illiteracy around trans folks is nothing short of dangerous.
I hope the folks at @60Minutes know there’s a human toll to their irresponsibility.
Each and every person affiliated with selecting THIS narrative for airtime should be held accountable. https://t.co/CtsGRH366u
— pfpicardi (@pfpicardi) March 20, 2021
“Each and every person affiliated with selecting THIS narrative for airtime should be held accountable,” says the CCO of Teen Vogue, whose publication just ditched its would-be new editor for tweets made years ago and repeatedly apologized for. The 60 Minutes report has not even aired yet.
The reaction cited is interesting, as I cannot imagine anyone who doesn’t make mistakes, even if they publicly deny it. So some folks thought they were transgender and weren’t – why is this a problem for the transgender community?
Or is it? Sadly, I have to wonder if this is isolated outrage or systemic outrage, because the conservatives have given me precious little reason to trust their devotion to accuracy and context. If this is isolated, then it’s people who, as a friend has repeatedly put it over the years on other topics, think their shit don’t stink.
If this is systemic, then that community is definitely immature. It might even be broken, although I doubt it.
But Erickson doesn’t go down the path of maturity or that sort of thing, because he’s taking up the Limbaugh club of bashing mainstream media. That is one of the paths to profitability, and Limbaugh was all about the money, as he admitted himself. So, instead, Erickson states:
A man killed multiple workers as Asian themed spas, which tend to serve as houses of prostitution, though I don’t know if these particular ones were engaged in that. He believed they were and, dealing with an addiction to pornography and sex, decided to gun them down then head to Florida to take out those associated with pornography.
The media, of course, jumped in the moment the news hit and, before his motives were revealed, immediately declared it a hate crime and white supremacy.
First, in the finest Limbaugh fashion, he trashes the spas as brothels without bothering to cite studies, while pretending not to by saying he doesn’t know about these. Then he claims the mainstream media made shit up.
Sadly for him, the first report I read on this tragic incident, which was from CNN, cited the alleged murderer’s purported motive of being a sex addict. Quite sensibly, give the heritage of most of the victims and that of the aggressor, they also mentioned the possibility of this being a hate crime.
Nor does Erickson explore the utter inadequacy of the perpetrator’s explanation (I’d be more open to a claim of his victims being lizard people, and then we could just put him away somewhere), nor the goofy police spokesman who embarrassed himself. No, Erickson is busy fulfilling the Limbaugh mandate. He even isn’t sensible enough to not take an alleged murderer’s word, instead going with this:
One thing white supremacists are actually pretty forthright about is their white supremacy. When ISIS takes credit for an attack, one can be pretty sure ISIS is involved. When white supremacists attack, they tend to be very open about their desires for a race war or racial purity.
First, the wave of the distracting hand – ISIS, which has nothing to do with this, but does stir up the emotions – and then When white supremacists attack, they tend to be very open about their desires for a race war or racial purity.
Oh, really? How can we know this? We take their word for it? And assume those murderers that don’t proclaim it are not … white supremacists?
Talk fast and the rubes won’t notice the holes in your logic, Erickson.
And thus we get to this:
The rest of us in society are forced to guard our words lest we call someone by their name and we aren’t allowed to speak plain truths about transgenderism. Social ills are not crime, vandalism, illegal aliens flooding the border, etc. The social ills are racism, transphobia, xenophobia, and whiteness. The woke mob will come for us and the woke mob has the Fortune 500 in its corner.
He may be right. There may be an autocratic woke mob out to rule the US. Or at least strongly influence it … just like Erickson.
Butt, in the end, if Erickson’s “woke mob” does exist, it will eventually collapse of its own contradictions. Just as has Erickson’s own conservative movement.
Yes, already. We might argue whether it’s completely collapsed or in the process, but that’s what we’re seeing. Erickson’s acknowledged it himself, in his condemnation of the January 6th Insurrectionists, his puzzlement over President Trump’s campaign tactics, his disgust at the production and consumption of lies by his fellow conservatives, etc. Sometimes I think the only thing that keeps him going is his anti-abortion position and his belief in a God who aligns so closely to his own positions.
But the woke mob will have similar problems. For example, the assertion that a transgender person, say, a man transitioning to a woman, is now a woman in all senses of the word, including athletics, which has engendered (hah!) quite a lot of controversy. I’ve seen that assertion by woke academics, although I didn’t keep those links around, darn it. Those assertions will, I think, founder on the rocks of reality, in particular rocks like Dr. Renee Richards, one of the earliest of the transgender folks:
Despite all this, Richards has expressed ambivalence about her legacy. She continues to take pride in being “the first one who stood up for the rights of transsexuals.” But she also mused, “Maybe in the last analysis, maybe not even I should have been allowed to play on the women’s tour. Maybe I should have knuckled under and said, ‘That’s one thing I can’t have as my newfound right in being a woman.’ I think transsexuals have every right to play, but maybe not at the professional level, because it’s not a level playing field.” She opposes the International Olympic Committee’s ruling in 2004 that transgender people can compete after they’ve had surgery and two years of hormonal therapy.
The science of distinguishing men from women in sports remains unsettled. And Richards has come to believe that her past as a man did provide her advantages over competitors. “Having lived for the past 30 years, I know if I’d had surgery at the age of 22, and then at 24 went on the tour, no genetic woman in the world would have been able to come close to me. And so I’ve reconsidered my opinion.” She adds, “There is one thing that a transsexual woman unfortunately cannot expect to be allowed to do, and that is to play professional sports in her chosen field. She can get married, live as woman, do all of those other things, and no one should ever be allowed to take them away from her. But this limitation—that’s just life. I know because I lived it.” [Slate]
I expect the assertion that a transitioned person should be considered the equivalent in athletics of their chosen gender is going to wither and die; the howls of protest from the ideologues will be in inverse correlation to the strength of their critical connection to reality. If those screams become deafening, the whole movement might collapse.
And how that controversy should be resolved is not entirely clear to me. Two more competitive classifications? Get rid of gender-based classifications entirely? Think about how boxing and wrestling have weight classes.
But that’s off track. Erickson seems to be settling into Limbaugh’s shoes, keeping the conservatives stirred up and hating the mainstream media, reminding them that Change is bad! … even if it’s harmless and will help the majority of people engaging in it. Strip a bit of context here, a little white lie there, surely God won’t mind.
Right?
