Balancing Work And Home



Difficult (or at least obscure) question:    what do Elton John and Hilary Rosen have in common?

Easy question:    what do Elton John and the late Dusty Springfield have in common?

Rush Limbaugh, happily ensconsed in his fourth marriage, was complaining yesterday about Hilary Rosen and Democrats and liberals and their hatred for stay-at-home mothers, and touting his own support for the traditional relationship between the sexes.      He chose to bolster his argument by approvingly playing "Wishin' and Hopin,'" a hit record (that's what they were called back then) by Dusty Springfield in 1964.     Representative of the lyrics is this portion:

So if you're thinkin' heartbreak 
True love is
All you gotta do is 
Hold him and kiss him and squeeze him and love him 
Yeah, just do it and after you do, you will be his

And because Rush assumes his listeners are dim-witted and didn't get the message, he followed with "This is it.  This is the root, folks.  Cook his meals.  Iron shirts.  Put out his slippers."     He wasn't kidding, and no tongue was witnessed in cheek.

Throughout the early period of rock/pop music, there was no shortage of songs extolling the virtue of the relationship between men and women common (or at least we suppose) prior to the women's movement.       Rush, however, specifically selected a song from Dusty Springfield.

I liked Springfield, which is why a video of one of her famous songs is shown below.     But Limbaugh was otherwise motivated.      The performer while alive was rumored to be a lesbian; in death, and with greater acceptance of homosexuality, it is now largely acknowledged.    

Wonderment followed the announcement that the flamboyant Elton John would be the featured entertainer at the June, 2010 wedding of Mr. Limbaugh and Ms. Rogers.       People were amazed that John would be chosen to sing at the wedding of the famous right-wing talk show host, thought to be anti-gay.    However, one man involved in preparation of the wedding explained      

Rush and his now-wife had been vacationing in Hawaii when Limbaugh developed what some believed to be heart trouble. Sir Elton happened to be staying in the same hotel and inquired of the manager as to Limbaugh’s condition. Rush joked in his speech at the reception that he asked the hotel manager whether Elton was happy or upset over the news was that he was okay. The bride-to-be wrote a letter thanking Elton for his concern, and an email friendship of sorts ensued.

As the day drew closer, she sent an email telling Sir Elton that there is no one they would rather have play at their wedding (I would have loved to have heard the discussions in that committee when the decision to ask Elton John was made). With the flash of a few emails (and a reported $1 million dollar fee), suddenly Elton John’s European tour schedule was changed, Rush’s future wife got what she wanted, and we were going to be the beneficiaries of her good taste.

The very openly gay Elton John was invited to headline the festivities because there was "no one" she preferred to provide entertainment, and Rush's fiancee  "got what she wanted."     Further, at the wedding the Limbaughs suggested that they get together at a later date with Elton John and his partner.

Rush recently was roundly criticized for outrageous statements during the recent contraceptive controversy, including repeated references to Sandra Fluke as a "slut" and "prostitute."     Evidently, Mrs. Limbaugh was not amused but instead, according to the National Enquirer (which was, at least, right about Rielle Hunter), was

furious at the 61-year-old con­servative firebrand and threatened to walk out of their marriage if he keeps up his trash talk, say insiders.... Rush’s big mouth has caused a rift in his fourth mar­riage, and sources say he’s now running for cover from 35-year-old Kathryn, a Florida event plan­ner.

Kathryn was still angry after her husband's "limp apology," less because of his duplicitous, belligerent attack upon Democrats and the need for family planning than because it

didn’t stem the tide of criticism, and his beautiful wife of less than two years was swept up in the controversy, having to endure rebukes from some of her closest friends.

“Kathryn is fit to be tied,” said a pal. “She feels as if she’s be­ing tarred and feathered with the same brush that people are using on her hus­band. She really let him have it.

According to the report, Mrs. Limbaugh "said she’s become a social pariah because of his hot-headed, heedless comments."

Limbaugh's topic in this segment was not the capital gains tax or U.S. policy in Afghanistan, but the proper relationshp (as if there is one such thing) of woman to man.         The sexual preference of the singer cited by Limbaugh as getting it right is intimately related to this issue, to the perspective she brought to the lyrics.      Eager to attack a Democratic strategist who criticized a stay-at-home mother for not working outside the home for pay, Limbaugh played the audio of a long-ago performer who was gay, probably pleasing his wife. Kathryn, a personal friend of Elton John, apparently has to answer to her other friends, many of them gay or sympathetic to those who are.     Meanwhile, Rush strategically chose not to remind (or inform) his ultra-conservative audience that Dusty Springfield was a lesbian.

Praise is due Rush Limbaugh, a radical conservative and partisan (not in that order) who continually criticizes Democrats, repeatedly on the same issues, week after week, day after day.    But on gay marriage- for approximately the past eighteen months- Limbaugh has been virtually silent.    He is a master juggler, able to keep his wife at least somewhat satisfied while maintaining his appeal to an audience he masterfully manipulates.








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Limbaugh and Elton John

Bernard McGuirk, infamously the producer of Don Imus' former program on WFAN New York, frequently performed a skit asking "Which Doesn't Belong and Why?" And now for today's edition:

October, 2006: In their hearts and minds and their crotches, they don't have any problem with what (then-GOP Representative Tom) Foley did. They've defended it over the -- over the years.

June, 2008: Democrats will bend over, grab the ankles, and say, 'Have your way with me,' for 10 percent and 2 percent of the population?"

Summer, 1994: When a gay person turns his back on you, it is anything but an insult ; it's an invitation."

June, 2010: Elton John performs (for $1 million) at the Palm Beach, Florida wedding of Rush Limbaugh and Kathryn Rogers.

That would be Elton John, the famously gay giant of pop/rock music and of the Elton John Aids Foundation. Why would the right wing Rush Limbaugh, who has made a point of his hostility toward homosexuality, hire Mr. John to play and sing at his wedding?

Supportive Limbaugh biographer Zev Chafets suggests four possible reasons, though he assiduously implies that they are mutually compatible. Chafets claims "I’m pretty sure that Elton John’s sexual orientation never even crossed Limbaugh’s mind," which suggests Rush is stunningly aware. Or Chafets is stunningly stupid or lying, either of which is more likely than Limbaugh being asleep the past 40 years.

Chafets argues also

Limbaugh has been deaf for many years. He can make out speech thanks to a cochlear implant, but not music. What he can do is remember songs from the past. As a young top forty DJ, Rush played Elton John songs a thousand times. He knows them by heart.

That may have been a factor, along with Chafets' observation "if your bride is twenty-six years younger than you, you want entertainment that with a multi-generational appeal." Translated in the manner I prefer: my wife likes John's music and I have to concede something in order to marry an attractive woman much younger than I. I might be a hateful, venom-spewing extremist, but I never said my wife wouldn't call the shots (at least on some things).

Personal attacks aside, however, there is this: Ever the apologist, Chafets claims "hiring Sir Elton was not a social statement" (because, apparently, Rush would never, ever make a "social statement"). But he does contend, significantly, that Limbaugh

is not, and has never pretended to be, a member of the Christian Right. As a young disc jockey he invented a fictitious faith healer, “Friar Shuck” who saved people over the radio for a hundred bucks a pop. Shuck is gone now, but Rush’s show still has a rakish, sometimes impious edge. His fans know he was an Oxycontin addict who spent time in rehab, that he unapologetically appreciates “adult beverages” and beautiful women and that his Sunday devotionals take place in the Church of the NFL. As his good friend Roger Ailes once told me, Rush lives the way Jackie Gleason would have lived if Gleason had been rich enough.

The era of the "family values" Party is over, killed by the growing realization of Republicans that the true base of their party, the country club set, found appeals to ethics and religion inconvenient and uncomfortable. Oh, many Republicans throughout the nation still attend church, believe in (and occasionally practice) traditional values and really, truly believe the same of GOP pols and media figures.

He is still the same old Rush, the guy who would ridicule Christians on the radio for ratings, use and abuse a prescription drug, and flaunt his alcohol use. The same Rush who doesn't care about reproductive choice, gay rights, or gun control, except to flog its supporters because it's the Democratic Party that is associated in the public's mind with these views. That's why Chafetz may be sincere and accurate when he maintains that Rush supports civil unions. Limbaugh merely appears to oppose all gay initiatives so as to sharpen the ideological divide between the parties, and among Americans. Cultural issues are a mere weapon to achieve his aim of polarization of the electorate.

Oh, sure, Rush does regularly ridicule Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), known by many of his listeners primarily for being gay and a Democrat, which some believe are synonymous, anyway. But while they giggle and guffaw at the Dancing Queen parody, many are unaware of Limbaugh's real beef with Frank, and it's not sexuality:

But when, of course, there are "obscene profits" to be discussed, ladies and gentlemen -- such as big oil company obscene profits -- why all of a sudden there are companies in Barney Frank's world. When there are obscene profits, companies around about people. They are about companies, and they are evil, and we have got to punish them! We have got to steal from them and we have got to make sure that they realize they don't run things, that we do. But here when you have General Motors and Ford and Chrysler, they're not companies. They're just people! This, ladies and gentlemen, honesty and the straightforwardness of America's Banking Queen, Barney Frank, Massachusetts.

Barney Frank's sin, according to Rush Limbaugh: he questions the largely unregulated corporations which in their single-minded pursuit of profit put the safety and well-being of people at risk- and to make matters worse, he is sympathetic to American businesses which employ Americans and actually make goods used by Americans.

Who not employed by a drug company could be threatened by cheaper prescription drugs?On December 11, 2009, after acknowledging that the (North Dakota Senator Byron) Dorgan drug-reimportation bill would lower prices, Limbaugh maintained

To me it's all. It is a piece of garbage that needs to be thrown out, and certainly do not put it in the recycle bin. Put it where it is going to be destroyed and never come back.

Are Rush's listeners aware that he would prefer they pay higher prices for life-saving drugs rather than endangering the profits of pharmaceutical comanies? Have they noticed that he never, ever opposes anything that would threaten the corporate bottom line, no matter how it may serve the interests of the public? Perhaps now that Rush has decided to shower Elton John with $1 million- which the latter may use to aid gay-related cause(s)- they will begin to recognize Rush Limbaugh's Great Scam. Anyone can dream.

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