CON GAMES: Canards And Other Gross Things

October 25th, 2006 at 06:49am Michael Conniff 2

The latest spate of campaign ugliness--surprise?--stretches all the way from Rush Limbaugh to Eagle County, Colorado, where a candidate for County Commissioner stands anonymously accused of "living with a black man that had past drug convictions and child support issues."

The headline in the Aspen Daily News reads: "Racist Flier Taints Eagle County Race."  So one wonders: does that mean it's hunky-dory to be living with a druggie who is a bad father if he is not a person of color?

Also worth noting: the Eagle County dust-up sounds suspiciously akin to the gross canard the Governor Bush W.  Bush campaign spat so unceremoniously at John McCain the the Republican Presidential primary in South Carolina in 2000--that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock. In fact, the Senator from Arizona had adopted a child of color, a fact that had gone all but unremarked before it could be used against him at the pivotal moment in Bush's frog-march to the Presidency.

Nor has radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh of the Excellence in Broadcasting network been in absentia when the subject turns to big fat cigars and campairn slurs. Ell Rushbo--and no, his is not an illegal immigrant--has come to the conclusion that partisan actor Michael J. Fox has been faking his Parkinson's Disease for political purposes. Fox, you see, has this annoying habit of lobbying for stem cell research that might actually save his life. In the meantime, he takes medication to control what appears to be uncontrollable shaking.

Limbaugh nonetheless intoned that Fox can turn his disease on and off like a Republican with potty-mouth talking points. In particular, in an ad supporting Claire McCaskill for United States Senate, the master talkmeister charges the actor with going off his meds simply to make a point on the stump for a Democrat who supports jackedp-up research into God's miraculous cells. 

"Michael J. Fox is allowing his illness to be exploited," Limbaugh said on-air, "and in the process is shilling for a Democrat politician.... I have gotten a plethora of e-mails from people saying Michael J. Fox has admitted in interviews that he goes off his medication for Parkinson's disease when he appears before Congress or other groups as a means of illustrating the ravages of the disease."

Plethora me no plethoras, pill-popping popinjay!

Rush and his many minions base their claims about Fox on his no-jitter performance ofn the "Boston Legal" television show. TV talk show host Larry King, with Fox on the set of that show, put the speculation to rest last night when he attributed the difference to heavy editing of "Boston Legal" that renders Fox's disease all but moot in the final product.

But no matter. Sleeping with a black man in early 21st Century America is no more a crime than controlling your debilitating disease with medication. To say what Rush Limbaugh said about Michael J. Fox, you'd almost have to be on drugs.
 

Entry Filed under: Politics, Vail, Con Games, Eagle County