Different Day, Same Shit.

"I hear all the time the expression 'the good old days'," Leon said. "Well, the good old days, we forget they have been good for some, but they weren't good for everybody.

"You can't go back, you can't live in the past," he added. "It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling people back...for Blacks to be back in the back of the bus, for women to be back in the kitchen, for gays to be in the closet and for immigrants to be on their side of the border."

"What you and I understand," Leon said, "is that when Jesus says, 'You can't hang onto me,' he says, 'You know it's not about the past, it's not about the before, it's not about the way things were, but about the way things can be in the now.'"

The above comes from a sermon delivered by Dr. Luis Leon at St. John's Episcopal Church on Easter Sunday. It just so happened that the president and First Family were in attendance. You can see where this is going.

Predictably, folks on the right aren't taking Dr. Leon's moment of "real talk" too well - in fact, they're having flashbacks of Dr. Jeremiah Wright's infamous sermon and they're looking forward to seeing the president toss the good pastor under the bus in the same manner. I doubt that'll happen, but you can count on conservatives grinding their axes on this particular stone for the next few months. And you can count on CNN, NPR and other mainstream outlets politely tut-tut the president for encouraging this sort of thing.

Look beyond the consternation and manufactured outrage and you'll see a blinding, glaring truth that very few want to acknowledge or embrace:

"You can't go back, you can't live in the past," he added. "It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling people back...for Blacks to be back in the back of the bus, for women to be back in the kitchen, for gays to be in the closet and for immigrants to be on their side of the border."

Which is what conservatives have been asking for all along, only in various ways that easily pass muster in a polite society where blatant talk is absolutely unacceptable. If it isn't curtailing women's rights by leaving their reproductive faculties under the control of state legislatures via abortion and birth control bans, then its putting an end to GLBT rights, same-sex marriages and fair treatment of illegal immigrants. I won't even mention the designs these folks have for black Americans - needless to say, it ain't pretty.

Thing is, conservatives absolutely hate it when these things are put out in the open. They hate it even more when they get called out on it. Some folks even resort to unabashed projection - anointed conservative mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh called the president "a racist" who "promotes racist behavior whenever he can" and "inspires racism":

“Obama’s presence inspires this guy to go all divisive, all racist. And start jamming on the Republicans for wanting blacks in the back of the bus, women back in the kitchen, when he can’t name a single person who does.”

I think he means the president can't name a single Person That Matters™ who's stupid enough to openly ask for these things - that's something you'd do only via dog whistles and codewords.

Truth isn't something that can be borne lightly; some people can't stand to bear it at all. Nevertheless, offering truth at every opportunity is the key to changing society for the better. If that means conservatives and their mouthpieces catch the vapors over it, then so be it.

By the way, the president looked rather dapper on this Sunday outing.

And the biggest fear of these rightwing broadcasters is that the “fairness doctrine,” which their hero Reagan killed, will be re-instituted. Radio managers weren’t too enamored of the government monitoring whether each minute of rightwing tit was met with an equal in length leftwing tat, so they often replaced talk radio with soft rock, or a gardening show, to spare themselves the headaches.

There's a lot of talk about whether Rush Limbaugh's latest asshole outburst will earn him a permanent leave of absence from the EIB golden mic. It won't, most likely. The most preferable plan of action for his paymasters is to wait for the whole thing between him and Sandra Fluke to blow over and die within the ADHD-addled minds of American media consumers.

The above comes courtesy of Lee Haven of Jack and Jill Politics. I doubt the Fairness Doctrine will be resurrected any time soon, even when President Obama finally achieves "lame duck" status and has to no longer gingerly step through the conservative minefield just to stay in office. "Lame duck" status gives him the keys to the minesweeper, but it's up to him if he wants to put the flails to the mines littered all over the landscape.

But what if Rushbo's stupidity finally made reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on the nation's airwaves a once-more viable and appealing solution? It's far-fetched, but enough people could finally be so disgusted that the idea could be put in motion without as much opposition from conservatives.

I doubt that'll happen. For starters, most people simply turn the dial when they get sick of Rushbo's shit. That leaves his adoring legions of "dittoheads" and die-hard conservatives. His steadfast fan base will cry foul if any mention of the Fairness Doctrine is made, as such a thing would be seen as a way to "muzzle" their golden boy. The president himself currently opposes any move to revive the Fairness Doctrine and it's uncertain if this incident will change his mind. The FCC recently removed language referring to it from both its rulebook and from the Federal Register, making it even less likely for any sort of sudden revival.

The best course of action for people who want Rushbo to feel some sort of consequence for his actions is to hammer his advertisers. He has to do what the money tells him to do and so far, the money's telling him to tone it down a notch. After all, he's just a mouthpiece.

I'd love to see pill-popping sex fiend be shown the door, but like cockroaches and early 1970s home decor, he'll tenaciously cling to that golden mic. It took a rather sudden case of death to end Andrew Breitbart's hackery and with Limbaugh's shaky health, the same might happen to the grand champion of asshole/fuckwad behavior.

By the way, I forgot to mention how Bill O'Reilly jumped into the fray with the following comment:

"Let me get this straight, Ms. Fluke, and I'm asking this with all due respect," he said. "You want me to give you my hard-earned money so you can have sex?"

I guess when you're constantly skirting the edges of irrelevancy, you have to do or say something to remind people you actually exist.

"...when the left wants to pretend they have no sense of humor, they are excellent at it. Yesterday in the riff about it, 'Okay, okay, fine. If we're gonna pay for this, at least let us have something for it. How about some sex videos?' If anybody doesn't realize that we are illustrating absurdity here by being absurd and that that is the trademark of this program ... But oh, no! 'Oh, of everything else you've said, that's the lowest of the low. Demanding sex video? Who do you think you are?' Lighten up. I remember using that phrase all the way back in 1989: Lighten up."

"...now, at the end of this week, I am the person that the women of AMERICA are to fear the most. What can I do to the women of AMERICA? Do I have the power to raise their taxes? I do not. Do I have the power to regulate their behavior? I do not. Do I have the power to make health care decisions for them? I do not. Do I have the power to withhold birth control pills from them? I do not. Do I have the power to audit their tax returns? I do not. Do I have the power to take their little four-year-old kindergarten student's lunch and throw it away and make 'em eat something else? I do not. Do I have the power to look into their personal life and leak the information to the media? I do not. Is there one bit of freedom that I can deny them? Can I raise their taxes? They want to blame me as being the person they should fear, when in fact the people doing all these things I just said I have no power to do, the DEMOCRAT PARTY (sic) is doing."

Rush Limbaugh remains the grand champion when it comes to unleashing one's inner asshole for both money and media fame. I forgot to add in the previous blog post that there's yet another way to neutralize an asshole: hit the asshole in his wallet. Or in Rush's case, his show's advertisers.

Countless people took to Twitter and petitioned companies that bought airtime on Rushbo to pull their ads in protest. So far, several advertisers were convinced to pull their ads from the Rush Limbaugh radio program, including:

• Sleep Train
• Select Comfort
• LegalZoom
• Quicken Loans
• Citrix

And as he discovered while on the air that Obama had called Fluke, Limbaugh mocked their exchange. “Aw. That is so compassionate! What a great guy,” Limbaugh said. “The president called her to make sure she’s okay. What is she, 30 years old? Thirty years old, a student at Georgetown law who admits to having so much sex that she can’t afford it anymore.”

Later on the show, the radio host laced into the president for telling Fluke that her parents should be proud of her.

“Your daughter appears before a congressional committee and says she’s having so much sex, she can’t pay for it and wants a new welfare program to pay for it. Would you be proud? I don’t know about you, but I’d be embarrassed. I’d disconnect the phone. I’d go into hiding and hope the media didn’t find me,” Limbaugh said.

I'd ask if it's too much for Rushbo to just shut the fuck up, but I find it more entertaining to see the ol' pillhead dig himself in the hole that much deeper.

By the way, thanks to Redeye's diligence in locating contacts to Rushbo's biggest sponsors and paymasters, I was reminded that Clear Channel, the radio channel hosting the Rush Limbaugh show, is currently owned by Bain Capital. You know, the company founded and run in part by none other than Mitt Robot Romney.

@DDSSBlog @PragObots Looky here: leveraged buyout of Clear Channel for $17.9 bil in 08. Scrambling to refinance $20.6 bil LBO debt in '11
— eclecticbrotha (@eclecticbrotha) March 2, 2012

Speaking of assholes, not only has District Judge Richard Cebull apologized to the president for getting caught forwarding the infamous "Obama dog" email, but he's also calling for an investigation...on himself:

U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull says he will apologize to President Obama and ask for a panel of judges to investigate his conduct after a Montana newspaper reported he had sent a racially inflammatory message using his courthouse email account last month.