CLASS

CLASS

Today, the conservative blogs are full of attacks on the lack of class shown by former President Carter and others in using Coretta Scott King’s funeral as a spot to harangue the current President and to make political points.  This is certainly a valid point.  Among those making such points was Political Talk Show Host Rush Limbaugh.

Now, I have listened to Limbaugh off and on, for years, and for a long time, I was, at least to some degree, a fan.  I have found him entertaining, abrasive, informative, and sometimes irritating.  I somewhat resented his thought that anyone who disagrees with him is not conservative.  I was a conservative long enough ago to have been seriously irritated when the Republican party chose Eisenhower over Taft.  That was when Limbaugh, if alive, was probably in diapers.  But, the thing that has begun to offend me, in the past few years is his lack of class.  

For example, I remember an episode a year or so ago (at seventy plus, it is hard to count how many exactly) when he spent most of an hour whining about attending a restaurant or banquet where he feared that his Lexus (or some other luxury car) would not be parked by the valet parking attendant, but would be helpless in the midst of plebian Fords and Chevrolets, the owners of which, as plebians, might carelessly open a car door and “ding” his motorized masterpiece.  There was the clear implication that he was not used to that kind of company.  The big insult (as he perceived it) was that when he determined to back out of the driveway his path was blocked by (with great sarcastic accent) “Seasoned Citizens” who had been waiting for his temper tantrum to subside so that they could go in to eat and who did not instantly submit to the great man’s will and move their cars out of his way.

This afternoon I got in the car, which was tuned to a station that carries his show, he was sermonizing on the evils of those who were using the King funeral to politicize, then, he played a cut of President Clinton’s speech (stating that now we would hear the country’s first Black President).  He then proceeded to  “voice over” Clinton’s words.  His first comments were to be expected.  His hate for Clinton oft overcomes any good sense (I am amused by his frequent (and partially true) diatribes about the only thing the Democrats have going is HATE, when the mere mention of Clinton or Hillary brings his hate for them into such dramatic view.  No Democrat with hate for Bush has ever equaled the incredible hate he demonstrates for the Clintons).  When he began to pick at wording of Clinton’s speech, and make fun of Hillary standing beside him it was just old Rush “goin  on”.  When he began to mock the funeral itself, referring to the body of Mrs. King as “the mummy” implying that the attendees and especially the Clintons were like Egyptian death worshipers, (over and over) he went over the line.  At that point, he had no right to judge the “class” of anyone else.  He showed himself for the classless bigot he has become.  I liked him better when he made me angry.  Now he arouses pity.