Buster, Rush, a psychopathic press & the Crucible of W

My son Buster was not in school today, of course, due to Veteran’s Day. He spent the better part of the morning and afternoon working on an Eagle Scout project for one of the fellows in his troop, and while they were working, they kept a radio on. One of the scoutmasters in attendance wanted to hear the president’s speech, and so they tuned into Limbaugh’s program.

“The speech was really good,” Buster said, “but when it was over, instead of switching back to music, we stayed tuned to Rush, because he was taking calls from people about the speech. Then at one point Rush said he was looking at the news-show responses and some reporter said something like, ‘the fact that Bush is defending himself proves he lied.’ Didn’t you tell me once, Mom, that that’s a psychopathic thing to say?”

I smiled. That was a couple of years ago, that I’d said that. I hadn’t realized he was actually paying attention.

My birth family was a troubled one – lots of dysfunction, of which I won’t go into detail, but one of the more messed up aspects of that dysfuction was that the Patriarch – a brilliant and troubled man – would routinely make outlandish, very ugly accusations at various members of the family and then, when they would struggle to defend themselves, their honor, their reputations, their own scruples, their own ability to reason, the escalating battle would result in the defendant falling into frustrated hysteria while trying to be heard and understood as innocent of whatever mad charges the Patriarch had made, (and believe me, the charges were always quite mad) and the Patriarch, sitting there very evilly, would smile and say, “if it were not true, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to defend yourself.”

I thnk I’ve mentioned before that I left home pretty young. I wasn’t going to subject myself to that madness.

I remember talking to a good friend, a psychologist, some years ago about the behavior of this Patriarch. After hearing a few stories she made a diagnosis. “He was a psychopath and a paranoid, with severe character disorders,” she pronounced. I didn’t disagree. Sounded about right to me.

I didn’t hear the Limbaugh program – I was doomed to sit in a doctor’s office, surrounded by pale, ailing people and trying to ignore one vapid ABC morning talk-program after another – honestly, I don’t get how folks can tune into that drivel, but anyway – if Buster heard correctly, I still don’t know which television pundit or reporter made the “it proves he lied” remark. It doesn’t matter, really. If Buster got it right, it just proves to me that my own recent suspicions that the press has descended into psychopathic behavior are not so far off the mark.

“I have made an accusation against you – I have my reasons for making the accusations, and they do not have to be reasonable – and the fact that you’re defending yourself only proves that my accusations are correct and you are guilty. Were you innocent, you would not be trying so hard to convince me of it.” That is the psychopathic pronouncement of the Patriarch. It is sick. It is not rational; it is not reasonable. It is hateful. It is wantonly, lasciviously destructive. It is evil. I have witnessed it firsthand. I know whereof I speak.

Buster said he and a few of the scouts tried to phone Limbaugh, it being “open-line Friday,” the day wherein Rush deigns to discuss those issues we mere mortals might wish to address (I understand, tongue-in-cheek, gotcha). They were finishing up and Buster had heard Limbaugh playing a tape of Mary Mapes saying that her fake-but-accurate documents regarding President Bush’s ANG service “are true, because no one has proven to me that they are not.” (Paraphrased).

This is apparently what passes for journalism, today. “J’accuse! I need not prove your guilt, but now, you must prove your innocence!” It is The Mad Patriarch, all over again.

Buster, anxious to demonstrate applied knowledge, immediately associated Mapes’ reasoning with Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, which they just finished up at school. “That’s precisely how the Salem Witchhunts began!” he exclaimed, “an accusation was made, and the accused was told to prove it false!” He grabbed a friend’s phone and spent 15 minutes trying to dial into Rush, to make his brilliant point. He never got through.

But he was ready! He tells me that – had he had a chance – he would have greeted Rush with “16 year old future-god-of-broadcasting-and-jazzy-sax ditto’s, here,” and then gone into his “Bush-is-Center-Stage-in-The-Crucible” observations.

So, Rush, if by any slim-to-none chance you’re reading this, you either missed a fun show-ender of a conversation with at least one muddy and blistered boy scout, or you escaped something from which you might never have recovered: an encounter with Buster’s Brain. :-)

Oh. My take on the speech? From what I have read of it, a good start. About damn time. More needed. Daily. There is a whole painless coup that needs thwarting. Dr Sanity has much more.

UPDATE: The president’s speech seems to be creating a lot of google hits for this posting. People looking for Democrat quotes, I guess.

UPDATE II: Don Surber is calling the speech Bush’s Gettysberg. Betsy points out that revisionist history means LYING.