On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh “explained” all the reasons why Michelle Obama was booed at Sunday’s NASCAR race. The First Lady appeared with Dr. Jill Biden, the Vice President’s wife, to deliver in person their support for military families, part of a campaign the two women have been working on all year.
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No one disputes the fact that NASCAR fans booed Michelle Obama, not Rush Limbaugh, not right wing propaganda outlet NewMax, no one.
Here are Rush Limbaugh’s reasons and defense of the booing:
“People don’t like being told they’re lousy parents, and Mrs. Obama has done that. People resent Mrs. Obama’s bizarre need to tell us what to eat and how much to exercise.”
“Mrs. Obama has a husband who runs around and apologizes for this country that he was elected to lead, Australia the latest example.”
“I’m also pretty sure this crowd is not eager to go out and buy a car that you have to plug in in order to drive. This is not a Prius, Leaf, Volt, plug it in and charge it and drive for 40 miles kind of crowd.”
“People who go to NASCAR races are the very people her husband called ‘bitter clingers’ when things aren’t going well. What do they do? Well they cling to their guns and they cling to their religion,” Limbaugh said, mockingly, of President Obama’s comments during the 2008 campaign.
Limbaugh of course also blamed Solyndra, and the President’s so-called “bankrupting of the economy,” as reasons the NASCAR crowd booed Mrs. Obama.
Then there was Limbaugh’s lie about the Affordable Care Act, what he calls “Obamacare,” which he falsely states that “65% to 70% of Americans who want no part of her husband’s healthcare plan.”
For the record, Forbes — hardly a progressive outlet, wrote last week that “a new CNN poll conducted during the period of November 11-13, 52 percent of those surveyed indicated that they now favor the mandate. This is a 6 percent rise in support since the question was last put to the public by a poll in June of this year and the first time those in favor have moved into the majority column.”
Limbaugh, is a fiction writer at best, and a liar at worst.
Jay Busbee, at Yahoo! Sports, today wrote,
NASCAR fans skew conservative. You know that, I know that, politicians know that. An overwhelmingly white fan base, rooted in Southern conservative values (we still have a pre-race prayer, for heaven’s sake) … it’s no surprise that NASCAR generally tilts right.
Which would be just fine, if that tilt didn’t slide into toxicity. But on Sunday afternoon at Homestead-Miami Speedway, it did.
Moments before one of the greatest races in sports history, certain NASCAR race attendees — I’m not dignifying these cowards with the term “fans” — showed why this sport will always have trouble getting respect from the mainstream of America: they booed the First Lady of the United States.
Inexcusable. Unforgivable. Don’t give me the “free speech” argument. Don’t give me the “Obama sucks” argument. Don’t try anything you can possibly do to rationalize this away. Why? For a very simple reason, one that supersedes both politics and sport:
You don’t boo women.
You don’t. Especially not in NASCAR, which reveres Mother’s Day so much it won’t even schedule races on that day. It’s stunning that we’ve slid this far as a culture that something as simple and profound as respect for wives and mothers is now this cheap.
This is not about politics. This is not about “free speech.” This is about being enough of a man (if you’re a man) and enough of an American, whoever you are, to recognize that we should hold ourselves to some higher standards in our public life. (And this also isn’t about stay-in-the-kitchen sexism. If we can agree to hold open a door for a woman, can’t we agree it’s acceptable not to boo her?)
If it was President Obama up there? Sure, boo your head off. Same thing if it was former President George W. Bush. The president takes the job, he should deal with the fallout and the negative opinion. But to boo the man’s wife? Especially when she’s engaged in that most conservative of pursuits, supporting military veterans and their families?
Come on. You just harmed the image of NASCAR worse than anything that Obama ever could have done.
Look, I get the reasoning, twisted though it may be. Michelle Obama is married to the president, and many in NASCAR nation have profound philosophical differences with the president, to put it politely. Whether NASCAR fans who break from Obama have legitimate political arguments with the way the president runs our country, or whether they’re just ticked that things ain’t as good as they were back when (and nobody ever says that in NASCAR, do they?), they can and should be allowed to express their grievances with him in public. But to do it by attacking his wife?
For the record, as hated as George W. Bush was, no one ever booed First Lady laura Bush, and Rush Limbaugh never once said that Mrs. Bush — a librarian whose pet cause while First Lady was getting kids to read — “People resent Mrs. Bush’s bizarre need to tell our kids what books to read.”