Charlie Kirk's pitch to students was "be a conservative because that will allow you to speak your mind, to truly be free, and to buck this oppressive system of liberalism all around you...."

"And it seems they were saying that the left at one point on college campuses was the counterculture, but around this time, it's pretty clear that it's just the culture in many of these campuses. And it feels like what's innovative about Kirk's pitches is that at this moment, conservatism can become the counterculture."

Says Michael Barbaro, on today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "The Assassination of Charlie Kirk."

He's interviewing fellow NYT reporter Robert Draper, who'd written a profile of Kirk that was published last February, "How Charlie Kirk Became the Youth Whisperer of the American Right/Collecting donors, voters, TikTok viewers and high-powered friends on his way into Trump’s inner circle."

In today's podcast, Draper says:

If we take "obliterate" literally, it means to cause to disappear.

The media seem to be overeager to undercut Trump's accomplishment by saying that he said the word "obliteration" but there's actually — possibly — something left. 

From this morning's news: "Trump reveals Israel sent agents to Iran’s bombed nuclear sites to confirm their 'total obliteration.'"

He seems determined not to abandon his word of choice, "obliteration."

How literally do we take "obliteration"? Really hardcore literalism would require that the thing be wiped from human memory. "Ob-" means against and "littera" means letter. Strike out the text. It's what Orwell's "memory hole" did. 

So how have we been using the word "obliterate" in recent years? Here's what I've noticed in the past 2 decades, just 11 examples taken from this blog's archive.

1. Quoting Hillary Clinton: "If [Obama] does not have the gumption to put me in my place, when superdelegates are deserting me, money is drying up, he’s outspending me 2-to-1 on TV ads, my husband’s going crackers and party leaders are sick of me, how can he be trusted to totally obliterate Iran and stop Osama?"

2. Quoting Camille Paglia: "Democrats are doing this in collusion with the media obviously, because they just want to create chaos... They want to completely obliterate any sense that the Trump administration is making any progress on anything... I am appalled at the behavior of the media...."

3. Quoting Trump: "As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!)."

"[Trump] is fighting for the fundamental idea that this country belongs... not to the radical left Communists...."

"We are going to have to be on top of it every single day focused every single day, driving forward every single day with unrelenting focus and passion because God gave us this country our founding fathers fought and died for this country, generations of Americans have sacrificed and bled for this country and we are not going to let the radical left — the Communists — and the American haters take our country. It's not going to happen. Not now. Not ever. So I ask you all to send a message right now to all the bureaucrats, to all the radical left commies, to the criminal aliens... to everyone who threatens the future of this country...."

Stephen Miller — at CPAC yesterday — called America's left wing "communists" and even "commies."

I think this is the only serious current use of the word "commie" that I've recorded in this blog. I've quoted a couple comic deployments of the word — here and here.

And I quoted Rush Limbaugh describing the "Dr. Strangelove" character Buck Turgidson: He just loves war and hates the Russians, hates the commies."

And I've got John Wayne in a Playboy interview — back in 1971: 

"There’s absolutely no one on the radio that can do it like him. All of today’s hosts, including his replacements..."

"... basically just repeat the news and offer a little insights. He would not only tell you what was happening, but why it was happening, and what will happen next. And he was always right."

 
That's the top-rated comment on the NY Post article "Rush Limbaugh’s wife sells his longtime Palm Beach home for record $155M."

"It answered a lot of questions for me. I was a pretty able person. I wasn’t looking for something like that."

"But I wanted to get rid of the barriers keeping me from what I wanted, to be an actress. It’s just part of my life."

Said Kirstie Alley, in 1992, when asked why she became a Scientologist, quoted in "Kirstie Alley, Emmy-Winning ‘Cheers’ Actress, Dies at 71 She also starred in the NBC sitcom 'Veronica’s Closet,' which aired from 1997 to 2000" (NYT).

She was born on January 12, 1951 — also the date of my birth. And Rush Limbaugh's.

ADDED: From Rolling Stone, "How Kirstie Alley Lost Herself in Scientology The late Cheers actress rose up the ranks to become a top Scientologist who lashed out at the controversial religion’s critics":

Rush Limbaugh, the "isolate."

From "Rush Limbaugh’s Complicated Legacy/He was a gifted entertainer and advocate, but in his later years certain flaws became more evident" by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal: 

To create a community of tens of millions of people in fractured, incoherent America was an astounding feat. To pretty much sustain it over 30 years was equally astounding. 

It is perhaps ironic but probably inevitable that that community was created by a man whom one of his closest friends this week called “an isolate.” Knowing him slightly over a few decades, I believe the most important thing to him was his profession, his show—three hours a day, five days a week, unscripted, with sound elements and callers....

He wasn't just isolated, he was an isolate. Isolation wasn't just a characteristic of his, in this formulation, it was what he himself was. 

I've never noticed "isolate" — the noun — used to mean a type of person. Of course, people are often referred to as "isolated," but "isolate"? It seems like "introvert" or "incel." It's all the way deep into your being. 

Yet somehow you have close friends, close enough that one of them can be referred to as "one of his closest friends." Do you have enough close friends that there's someone who'd refer to himself as "one of" your "closest friends"?! Maybe your "closest friends" are fairly distant. A person with no truly close friends still has his "closest friends." These people might not even know him well at all, just well enough to observe that he is isolated, and coldly enough to call him "an isolate." 

The noun "isolate" is a term in social psychology: "A person who, either from choice or through separation or rejection, is isolated from normal social interaction; also occasionally an animal separated from its kind" (OED).

 

People say we've got it made/Don't they know we're so afraid?

Rush Limbaugh has died.

Here's how it looks on The New York Times front page, replete with a misspelling of "provocateur":

   

If you click through, the misspelling is gone. The obit is headlined: "Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio’s Conservative Provocateur, Dies at 70/A longtime favorite of the right, he was a furious critic of Barack Obama and a full-throated cheerleader for Donald J. Trump." Excerpt: 

His wife, Kathryn, announced the death at the beginning of Mr. Limbaugh’s radio show. “I know that I am most certainly not the Limbaugh that you tuned in to listen to today,” she said. “I, like you, very much wish Rush was behind this golden microphone right now.... It is with profound sadness I must share with you directly that our beloved Rush, my wonderful husband, passed away this morning due to complications from lung cancer.”... 

A divisive darling of the right since launching his nationally syndicated program during the presidency of his first hero, Ronald Reagan, Mr. Limbaugh was heard regularly by as many as 15 million Americans. That following, and his drumbeat criticisms of President Barack Obama for eight years, when the Republicans were often seen as rudderless, appeared to elevate him, at least for a time, to de facto leadership among conservative Republicans. 

Such talk became obsolete in 2016 with the meteoric rise of Mr. Trump, who, after several flirtations with presidential races that were never taken very seriously, suddenly burst like a supernova on the national political landscape. Mr. Trump became president and Mr. Limbaugh, off the hook, became an ardent supporter. 

“This is great,” Mr. Limbaugh, sounding positively giddy, said of his new champion in the White House. “Can we agree that Donald Trump is probably enjoying this more than anybody wants to admit or that anybody knows?” Like dreams coming true, Mr. Limbaugh hailed the president’s efforts to curtail Muslim immigration, cut taxes, promote American jobs, repeal Obamacare, raise military spending and dismantle environmental protections....

The obituary headline at The Washington Post is "Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio provocateur and cultural phenomenon, dies at 70." Very nicely, this begins with a 6-minute clip where we see the great radio performer in his element [ADDED: I was reacting to the first few seconds. Now that I'm watching the whole thing, I can see it's quite clearly the case against Rush. Sorry for the misdirection.]

 

The text at WaPo is also much better than at the NYT, because it stresses radio performance over political effect, and there's just no question of Rush's greatness in the medium of radio. All can agree:

Rush Limbaugh, who deployed comic bombast and relentless bashing of liberals, feminists and environmentalists to become the nation’s most popular radio talk-show host and lead the Republican Party into a politics of anger and obstruction, died Feb. 17 at 70.

I like that the first adjective there is "comic." 

He saw himself as a teacher, polemicist, media critic and GOP strategist, but above all as an entertainer and salesman. Mr. Limbaugh mocked Democrats and liberals, touted a traditional Midwestern, moralistic patriotism and presented himself on the air as a biting but jovial know-it-all who pontificated “with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair,” as he often said.

 WaPo also gets it right that Rush did not support Trump in the 2016 primaries:

A lifelong deficit hawk who supported Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, Mr. Limbaugh often blasted businessman Donald Trump, saying, “Trump is not a conservative.” 

Much more at that link.

"Rush Limbaugh isn’t saying he wants the country to split into red and blue factions as a result of conservative fury over the election results."

"As he attempted to make clear Thursday, he’s just saying that other people are saying it. 'I know that there’s a sizable and growing sentiment for people who believe that’s we’re headed to, whether we want to get there or not, secession,' he said on his nationwide radio program. 'Now, I didn’t advocate for it. I never would advocate for secession. I’m simply repeating what I have heard.'... He didn’t say where he’s heard anyone float the notion of states seceding, let alone spell out how such a neo-Civil War separation might take place. But Limbaugh’s ambiguous flirtation with the idea may be his special contribution to conservative media’s rock-solid support of Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. 'I actually think that we’re trending toward secession,' he said on Wednesday’s show. 'I see more and more people asking what in the world do we have in common with the people who live in, say, New York?'" 

From "Secession? Rush Limbaugh floats a startling notion — then quickly backs off" (WaPo).

I agree with WaPo that it's a ridiculous notion, but there ought to be some acknowledgment that people on the left have been out there talking about the west coast seceding from the Union. 

AND: Here's a BBC article from April 2019, "What if California seceded from the US?" ("For the past few years, divides both within the state, and between California and the rest of the US, have sparked at least six initiatives aimed at breaking California into smaller states or cleaving it entirely from the rest of the country").

ADDED: Writing this post, I saw a little sidetrack into the Cascadia independence movement. 

"You call a gigantic press conference like that, one that lasts an hour, and you announce massive bombshells, then you better have some bombshells."

"There better be something at that press conference other than what we got.... They promised blockbuster stuff, and then nothing happened. And that’s just not good. I mean, if you’re gonna promise blockbuster stuff like that, then there has — now, I understand — look, I’m the one that’s been telling everybody, this stuff doesn’t happen at warp speed, light speed the way cases are made for presentation in court, but if you’re gonna do a press conference like that with the promise of blockbusters, then there has to be something more than what that press conference delivered. Now Sidney Powell is supposedly out, jumped the shark, got out over the skis.... I got a note from a very learned friend who was so let down by that press conference. He said, 'Man, Rush, after that press conference, I was expecting the evidence. I was expecting something to blow this thing to smithereens. I mean, you don’t go out and do a press conference like that with all of those promised bombshells and then zip, zero, nada? So I was expecting there to be some kind of computer expert or hacker who was then going to provide evidence and an example of what they were talking about that was blockbuster, but there was nothing.' And he said 'my real problem with this is it’s making Trump look like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s making Trump look like he’s floundering away out there.'"

Said Rush Limbaugh on his show yesterday.

"But if Biden wins, your borders will be gone and your country will be gone, frankly. Look, this is not a man that’s capable."

"When I meet with these heads of state, the one thing I can tell you, they’re sharp. They’re sharp. They’re not off. They’re sharp. This is not a man that can handle the job.... All he talks about is COVID, COVID, COVID because they want to scare people. And we’ve done so well with it. Now it’s 99.8%. I mean, you look at what’s going on and we’re rounding the turn. We’re rounding the corner. We’re rounding the corner beautifully. But Joe Biden was very disrespectful last night to President Barack Hussein Obama.... At last night’s debate, though, he was very disrespectful, really disrespectful. When he said that he, Joe, was vice president, not president, blaming Obama when trying to make excuses for the failed immigration policies, right? You saw that? 'I wasn’t the president. It was him.' Because we talked about cages, right? I said, 'Joe, you built the cages.' Remember, they tried to say 'cages for children.' And they said, 'Trump built cages.' And then they found out it was a little problem. There was a picture in the New York Times, the failing New York Times.... It was built under Obama/Sleepy Joe Biden. And so did you notice when I kept saying, 'Why did you build the cages, Joe? Why did you?' And he just kept talking. He didn’t want any part of it. But they started it. If you want jobs, safety, and borders, you have to vote for the party of Abraham Lincoln, Honest Abe. Vote Republican."

Said President Trump at a rally in The Villages, Florida yesterday. Transcript.

Megyn Kelly calls Michael Savage an "absolute douchebag."

I think I speak for, oh, pretty much everyone when I say STFU you absolute douchebag. https://t.co/bcQJvlfskr

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) October 19, 2020

"You know, I’ve loved to point out we all only get one life. We don’t get a do-over in the… Well, we do. Actually, we get a do-over every day if we choose to look at it that way."

"Once we’re old enough and mature enough to understand what life is and that there is only one, then you do get do-overs, an opportunity to fix what you think you might not have done so well the day before, which is an operative philosophy of mine. But the fact that I have that option and that opportunity compared to where I thought I would be at this time? I mean, that’s 'go get the hallelujah chorus and have ’em start singing to me,' because that’s exactly where this is — and the future? Far more optimistic than pessimistic, attitudinally, to me, because of the support systems I have, the people that are helping me, family. Ooh! Anyway, that’s it."

Said Rush Limbaugh at the end of his long opening monologue yesterday, in which he revealed that after getting his stage 4 lung cancer last January, he did not think he'd live to October.

It was hopeless. It was absolutely hopeless. Yet a treatment regimen was begun, and the first two of them failed. (chuckling) I mean, big-time failed. The third one? Magic! It worked. That’s where we were able, over the course of months, to render the cancer dormant.

But there some news now that the cancer has progressed.

"The conservatism of talk radio only partly overlaps with institutional conservatism, that of right-wing Washington think tanks, magazines and the Republican Party itself."

"By the early 2000s, it had embraced a version of conservatism that is less focused on free markets and small government and more focused on ethnonationalism and populism. It is, in short, the core of Trumpism — now and in the future, with or without a President Trump.... If you visit a carpentry shop or factory floor, or hitch a ride with a long-haul truck driver, odds are that talk radio is a fixture of the aural landscape. But many white-collar workers, journalists included, struggle to understand the reach of talk radio because they don’t listen to it, and don’t know anyone who does.... Because of the ocean of content, one must listen to it at great length, a daunting task for anyone not already sympathetic with a host’s conservative views....  Each show has its own long-running inside jokes and references, a kind of linguistic shorthand that unites fans and repels outside examination.... By 1963 President John F. Kennedy was so worried about what an aide called this 'formidable force in American life today,” which was able to “harass local school boards, local librarians and local government bodies,” that he authorized targeted Internal Revenue Service audits and the use of the Federal Communications Commission’s Fairness Doctrine to silence these pesky conservative broadcasters. The result was the most successful episode of government censorship of the last half century. Conservative broadcasters have never forgotten it, and it is a key reason that a conspiracist mind-set has such a grip on listeners. Since 2003, Rush Limbaugh, who got his start working in radio as a teenager in the mid-1960s, has mentioned the Fairness Doctrine on nearly 150 episodes. He credits the rise of talk radio to the lifting of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 by the Reagan administration."

From "Talk Radio Is Turning Millions of Americans Into Conservatives/The medium is at the heart of Trumpism" by Paul Matzko, author of “The Radio Right: How a Band of Broadcasters Took on the Federal Government and Built the Modern Conservative Movement" (NYT).

By the way, Trump is doing a virtual rally on the Rush Limbaugh show today — here.

Rush Limbaugh talks about George Floyd — and white supremacy — with Charlamagne Tha God.

It's a bit stressful! To put it very briefly: Rush wanted to express solidarity with everyone who's outraged over the killing of George Floyd but he was never ever ever going to agree that America is a system of white supremacy.

"You see all over the country now people are revolting against certain state governors who want to maintain lockdown. It can’t go on."

"This forced shutdown, the forced ruination of the United States economy must end. And I can’t tell you. I was longing for that day yesterday.... I don’t know how many of the people who are among our experts setting policy, I don’t know how many of them have been broke. I don’t know how many of them have been where 22 million Americans are, without a job, without any income, and unemployment compensation that just will not get it done. I don’t know how many. There may be some. I’m sure that the law of averages would dictate some have been there. But I don’t know how many. Trump has been there, by the way. Trump has been at the edge of the cliff looking over it. His survival techniques are a fascinating story and why they’re not going to damage him ultimately with every effort they’re gonna mount on this.... And I think that way too many people in some positions of authority and power really don’t face dire economic circumstances like an increasing number of the American people do. It worries me. As I say, I’ve been there, and it’s scary to me, just the memories of being in that circumstance. And it was a number of different times for me. It’s scary to remember it. But it enables me to understand what people are going through and how it cannot go on. It simply can’t...."

That's the Rush Limbaugh perspective (from yesterday's show).

Also: "Do you realize whatever the length of time this task force has been up and running there has not been one subversive leak, not one? Not a single subversive leak.

Trump wanted to start a White House radio talk show.

This idea came up in March, just before the announcement of the European travel ban. The idea would be "to quell Americans’ fears," the NYT reports. He'd have an open line — no screening — and talk with ordinary people — for 2 hours, every day. But he rejected the idea because he didn't want to encroach on Rush Limbaugh.

On Monday, Mr. Limbaugh argued that the “shutdown” was “a political effort to get rid of Donald Trump in the election this November” — as well as a Democratic ploy to “keep people fed without them having to go to work” and to “fine them for going to church.”

Mr. Limbaugh, a frequent golf partner of Mr. Trump’s in Palm Beach, Fla., has been candid and proud about his direct line to the president....

Polling shows that the vast majority of Americans support a national stay-at-home order, but Mr. Limbaugh’s audience — in other words, the president’s base — shares his agitation about jump-starting the economy....

So Limbaugh is helpful to Trump saying things Trump shouldn't say (but might be tempted to say on the radio).

On Friday, a caller [to Limbaugh] from Prescott, Ariz., wondered if experts were urging the shutdown of the economy as a way to model the potential effects of legislation intended to combat climate change. “Isn’t this kind of like a dry run of the Green New Deal?” he asked.

What would Trump say to that? I don't know, but I wanted to look up and see what Rush said. Here:

Rush Limbaugh imagines what's going on in the desperate, desolate minds of Democrats.

"You’re looking at your options today, and you’re asking, 'Okay, can we win with Klobuchar? We don’t want to put Klobuchar up there because she doesn’t have a prayer. Trump’s gonna wipe the floor with her, and that would mean two women in a row get wiped out by Donald Trump. Two Democrat women in a row. We can’t have that! We can’t let that happen.' Then they’re sitting there and they’re looking at Mayor Pete — a 37-year-old gay guy, mayor of South Bend, loves to kiss his husband on the debate stage — and they’re saying, 'Okay. How’s this gonna look, a 37-year-old gay guy kissing his husband on stage next to Mr. Man, Donald Trump? What’s gonna happen there?' They gotta be looking at that, and they’ve gotta be saying that despite all the great progress and despite all the great wokeness and despite all the great ground that’s been covered, America’s still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage president. They have to be saying this, don’t they? Now, there may be some Democrats who think that is the ticket. There may be some Democrats who think, 'That’s exactly what we need to do, Rush. Get a gay guy kissing his husband on stage! You ram it down Trump’s throat and beat him in the general election.' Really? Having fun envisioning that. What are you left with? Crazy Bernie. They’re left with the avowed revolutionary socialist who isn’t even a Democrat. So which of those three…? They want to take all three out. They would like to get rid of all three of those, the establishment of the Democrats. But if they can’t, which of those three would they rather lose with? Who among those three losing will do the least damage to the Democrat Party going forward? That’s what they are facing, if you ask me."

Link to Rush Limbaugh website.

I went to the official website for the link after reading (and listening to) "Rush Limbaugh: 'Mr. Man Donald Trump' will 'have fun' with Pete Buttigieg because he kisses his husband" at Media Matters. Media Matters intends to hold Rush up for contempt. Here's a comment from over there:

We don't want to get into what Flush likes to kiss, other than to say it did earn him a Medal of Freedom. And is there any more word on an exact time that the grim reaper will dispatch Flush to the fires below? I ask for millions of like-minded people who want to plan their block parties.

I think it's interesting that anti-Trump, anti-Rush people would view what Rush said as homophobic. He's imagining that Democrats are thinking that voters are homophobic. How is that different from what Democrats are saying out loud when they say — and they say this over and over — that black people won't vote for Buttigieg? They're all but coming out and saying that black voters are homophobic? It is different in one way — it disparages black people. If it's not disparagement, but simply an effort to understand how voters react to candidates, then what's wrong with what Rush said. The speech is too clear?

By the way, it's fantastic to hear Rush Limbaugh going strong on the radio. Even Rush haters should feel cheered by a man's strength against the forces of nature.

"Believing America’s generals were planning an imminent coup d’état, Mr. Bean abandoned his thriving career and moved his family to Australia in 1970."

"He became a disciple of the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich and wrote a book about his psychosexual theories, 'Me and the Orgone.' (The orgone was a pseudoscientific theory about a universal life force.) When the book appeared in 1971, Mr. Bean returned to America with his wife and four children and for years led a nomadic life as an aging hippie and 'househusband,' casting off material possessions in a quest for self-realization. 'We were so sure we didn’t want to be possessed by things and so intent on not having them that we gave away almost everything we owned,' he wrote in a 1977 Op-Ed in The Times. 'We entered what I now call our late hippie stage. We tossed the kids into the van, bummed around the country, sponging on our friends and putting the kids in school wherever we happened to light.' In his dropout years, as he recalled in a memoir, he experimented with psychedelic drugs, communal sex and other excursions into self-discovery. His peripatetic family collected driftwood and books, and at night read aloud to one another."

From "Orson Bean, Free-Spirited Actor of Stage and Screen, Dies at 91/The television, stage and film comedian starred on Broadway, was blacklisted as a suspected Communist, founded a progressive school and moved to Australia before returning to the U.S." (NYT).

If you remember Orson Bean, it is probably not for his hippie phase. As the NYT puts it, he is "remembered for early panel shows, which, in contrast to the culture of greed, noise and kitsch of modern game shows, were low key, relatively witty and sophisticated." You know, stuff like this:



He also acted in plenty of of movies and TV shows, notably the "Mr. Bevis" episode in the first season of "Twilight Zone." Clip:



Another distinction: Orson Bean was the father-in-law of Andrew Breitbart.

ADDED: Bean did not die of old age. He was struck by a car as he crossed the street in Los Angeles.

And this is interesting, from 2014, 3 years after the death of Andrew Breitbart, "Orson Bean on God, America, and Yesterday's Hollywood that Embraced Both" (Breitbard):

Bean said Breitbart resonated with so many people because he was fighting to right that culture, which he said is decaying, with optimism and joy. And he did it in an unconventionally fresh and unique way that warranted Breitbart’s name to be a trademarked, one-of-a-kind brand. Bean said it was Breitbart’s larger-than-life spirit that makes people come up to him to this day with tears in their eyes, saying, “you’re Andrew Breitbart’s father-in-law!”

Breitbart, who once was a fierce liberal, may never have been a conservative or built the foundation for his media empire had he not seen a Rush Limbaugh book in Bean’s library.

“Take it home and read it, Andrew,” Bean recalled telling his son-in-law.

And the rest is history.

Here's an Onion headline that somebody I know to be intelligent saw on Facebook and mistook for a real news headline.

"Rush Limbaugh Admits Presidential Medal Of Freedom Less Of An Honor Knowing That Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou Also Received It."

Remember that time Maureen Dowd needed to kick Rush Limbaugh, right after he announced he had advanced lung cancer, and she didn't spell his name right, because it was so important to remind us of the worst thing he ever said?

ADDED: This reminds me of the recent cancel-culture attack on Joe Rogan. You've got someone who talks for hours and hours and is good because he's free-wheeling and not too self-censoring. That makes for good listening. It's how to get popular on the radio or in podcasting. But it also means that there's a huge set of material that your antagonists can sift through, and the worst thing you ever said will be used as if it was most representative of the kind of person you are.

From a different perspective, it also reminds me of the reaction to the death of Kobe Bryant. Dowd is like the few people who brought up the old rape charge against Bryant. In this perspective, Dowd is not the canceller but the one who could be targeted for cancellation because of her lack of empathy for the person who has met with terrible misfortune. But she doesn't need to worry too much about that, because Rush Limbaugh is on the right and because his misfortune is his alone — there's no sweet daughter simultaneously struck by this lung cancer.