Today’s Quotes: Rush Limbaugh Unmasked

“Rush [Limbaugh] said that he thought most people are incredibly gullible, and he felt that the key to radio programming was to reach that crowd, and that it would be really, really easy. He thought he could get anyone to believe anything he said, and the more outrageous it was, the more they would believe it.” […]
“I think most of them [Rush’s listeners] are psychotic. I don’t think these people realize he’s just pandering to them for ratings, but if they find out, I wouldn’t want to be there.”
— Elliot Sanders, the St. Louis, MO, music store owner who claimed to have a 3-month-long gay affair with Rush Limbaugh in 1971.

“Suppose slavery still existed in the United States, but the federal government was trying to end it. However Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and so on told their audiences that slavery was a good thing, recognized by the Founding Fathers, endorsed in the Old Testament, the natural order of things, an issue for individual states to decide, protected by an individual’s inalienable right to do what he wanted with his property, and so on. I doubt Abraham Lincoln would find these arguments compelling. But how much trouble do you think the Patriotic Association of Slave Owners would have getting today’s Tea Partiers out to campaign for slavery in America?”
— Dr. Bob Altemeyer, author of “The Authoritarians,” from “Comment on the Tea Party Movement“ [.pdf file].

“But this Rush-Limbaugh/Fox-News/nationalistic movement isn’t driven by anything noble or principled or even really anything political. If it were, they would have been extra angry and threatening and rebellious during the Bush years instead of complicit and meek and supportive to the point of cult-like adoration. Instead, they’re just basically Republican dead-enders (at least what remains of the regional/extremist GOP), grounded in tribal allegiances that are fueled by their cultural, ethnic and religious identities and by perceived threats to past prerogatives — now spiced with legitimate economic anxiety and an African-American President who, they were continuously warned for the last two years, is a Marxist, Terrorist-sympathizing black nationalist radical who wants to re-distribute their hard-earned money to welfare queens and illegal immigrants (and is now doing exactly that).”
— Glenn Greenwald, “Fox News ‘War Games’ the Coming Civil War,” Salon.com, Feb. 22, 2009.