"Danny Glover is down in Venezuela,

or was, over the weekend where the government

of Hugo Chavez has given him about $18 million

to produce a movie aimed at bashing us,

the United States, western imperialism

and all that commie crap"

Hugo Chavez hopes the historical picture

will sprinkle Hollywood star dust on his effort

to mobilize world public opinion

against imperialism and Western oppression

Not his alleged opinion of the alleged

imperialism and western oppression,

but comments in the UK Guardian,

and of course they don't even question

the notion that we are an imperialist

nation and that we are oppressors

One of the things that concerns a lot of Americans lately is the increase in plain old nastiness in our political discussion. It comes from a number of sources, but Rush Limbaugh is a major carrier.

I should explain that I am not without bias in this matter. I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.

I have a correspondent named Irwin Wingo in Weatherford, Texas. Irwin and some of the leading men of the town are in the habit of meeting about 10 every morning at the Chat'n'Chew Cafe to drink coffee and discuss the state of the world. One of their number is a dittohead, a Limbaugh listener.

He came in one day, plopped himself down, and said, "I think Rush is right: Racism in this country is dead. I don't know what the niggers will find to gripe about now."

The kind of humor Limbaugh uses troubles me deeply, because I have spent much of my professional life making fun of politicians. I believe it is a great American tradition and should be encouraged.

We should all laugh more at our elected officials--it's good for us and good for them. So what right do I have to object because Limbaugh makes fun of different pols than I do?

I object because he consistently targets dead people, little girls, and the homeless--none of whom are in a particularly good position to answer back. Satire is a weapon, and it can be quite cruel.

It has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful. When you use satire against powerless people, as Limbaugh does, it is not only cruel, it's profoundly vulgar. It is like kicking a cripple.

The reason I take Rush Limbaugh seriously is not because he's offensive or right-wing, but because he is one of the few people addressing a large group of disaffected people in this country.

And despite his frequent denials, Limbaugh does indeed have a somewhat cultlike effect on his dittoheads. They can listen to him for three and a half hours a day, five days a week, on radio and television.

I can assure you that David Koresh did not harangue the Branch Davidians so long nor so often. But that is precisely what most cult leaders do--talk to their followers hour after hour after hour.

A large segment of Limbaugh's audience consists of white males, 18 to 34 years old, without college education. Basically, a guy I know and grew up with named Bubba.

Bubba listens to Limbaugh because Limbaugh gives him someone to blame for the fact that Bubba is getting screwed.

He's working harder, getting paid less in constant dollars and falling further and further behind. Not only is Bubba never gonna be able to buy a house, he can barely afford a trailer. Hell, he can barely afford the payments on the pickup.

And because Bubba understands he's being shafted, even if he doesn't know why or how or by whom, he listens to Limbaugh. Limbaugh offers him scapegoats. It's the "feminazis."

It's the minorities. It's the limousine liberals. It's all these people with all these wacky social programs to help some silly, self-proclaimed bunch of victims.

Bubba feels like a victim himself--and he is--but he never got any sympathy from liberals.

Psychologists often tell us there is a great deal of displaced anger in our emotional lives--your dad wallops you, but he's too big to hit back, so you go clobber your little brother.

Displaced anger is also common in our political life. We see it in this generation of young white men without much education and very little future. This economy no longer has a place for them.

The corporations have moved their jobs to Singapore. Unfortunately, it is Limbaugh and the Republicans who are addressing the resentments of these folks, and aiming their anger in the wrong direction.

It's important to show people that there is much more wrong with Limbaugh's thinking than just his facts.

Limbaugh specializes in ad hominem arguments, which are themselves ridiculously easy to expose. Ted Kennedy says, "America needs health care reform." Limbaugh replies, "Ted Kennedy is fat."

Rush Limbaugh's pathetic abuse of logic, his absurd pomposity, his relentless self-promotion, his ridiculous ego--now those, friends, are appropriate targets for satire. - Molly Ivins

Fatman Foams at the Mouth

Danny Glover, who is off and on crusades like you can't catch a cab in New York because he's a minority, is down in Venezuela, or was, over the weekend where the government of Hugo Chavez has given him about $18 million to produce a movie, and the movie is aimed at bashing us, the United States, western imperialism and all of this.

This idiot, Leonardo DiCaprio, an Algore acolyte got his own global warming movie coming out in which he says we face extinction. Mikhail Gorbachev is one of the stars of the movie.

Now, it used to be -- I mean, Hollywood, how many decades went by with Hollywood claiming they were persecuted when they were accused of being communists, when they were accused of being in league with communists?

Now look what's changed. They can't wait to throw up their hands and say, "Hey, we're with the commies!"

Now, this Danny Glover business, because it really is interesting, in the sense that it is a marked change among the liberals and the leftists from what used to be.

Venezuela's going to give the American actor Danny Glover about $18 million, $17.8 million to make a movie about a slave uprising in Haiti with president Hugo Chavez hoping the historical picture will sprinkle Hollywood star dust on his effort to mobilize world public opinion against imperialism and Western oppression.

Not his alleged opinion of the alleged imperialism and western oppression, this is, by the way, the UK Guardian, and of course they don't even question the notion that we are an imperialist nation and that we are oppressors.

The Venezuelan congress said it would use the proceeds from a recent bond sale with Argentina to finance Glover's biopic of Toussaint Louverture, an iconic figure in the Caribbean who led an 18th-century revolt in Haiti.

It will also give seed money for a film version of The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel García Márquez's novel about the last days of Simón Bolívar, who liberated much of South America from Spanish colonialism."

Then we've got Leonardo DiCaprio, and his new movie is called The Eleventh Hour. We don't often do movie reviews here, but these are too good to pass up. His new movie is The Eleventh Hour.

It's supposed to help you grasp the urgency of saving the planet from the bogus notion that a few degrees of higher temperatures will destroy life as we know it. This movie claims we are going to go extinct. Humanity is on the brink of extinction.

One of the stars of this movie is the former Soviet leader Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, and his role in the movie is to persuade viewers that average human beings have caused horrific damage to the environment.

Now, how? Average human beings have caused horrific damage to the environment simply by improving their standards of living. Now, in this movie about the extinction of the human race, one of the stars, Mikhail Gorbachev, will not talk about the proven harm, the genocide that occurred in his own country.

They inflicted massive amounts of genocide on their own people and they scorched the earth in a number of wars, death toll in the tens of millions, a track record of rampant corruption, widespread pollution.

Talk about oppression, how about the former Soviet Union? But, of course, none of that will be referenced by Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet commie boss. No, he's going to target you and me and every other American he thinks is average for destroying the planet.

He is going to be treated as a visionary, not as an apologist for communism. DiCaprio, by the way, credits Algore with educating him on global warming.

So you got Algore educating the sponge DiCaprio, and then DiCaprio will educate the sponges that go watch his movies and so the propaganda train just keeps chugging on down the track.

It's too bad that guy out in LA didn't park his car out in front of the propaganda train and try to derail it, but you can't ask for everything. But what's different about this?

You recall, and there have been countless movies about this and books, all the liberals in Hollywood spent decades trying to convince the American public and countless congressional hearings, committees.

That they weren't in bed with the communists; that they weren't secret members of the Communist Party USA; that this was blacklisting to say this about them; it was horrible character assassination to go out and say this and ruin people's careers. Why, why, we can't have that.

Now after decades of trying to make us believe that they had no contact with them whatsoever, now they're embracing communists as a badge of honor.

They are accepting money to go make their propaganda movies in the case of Danny Glover, still can't catch a cab in New York, and DiCaprio, who's doesn't even need to be commented on.

This, to me, is a remarkable change, and I think it's all part of the same evolution here of the American left. They were able to live in the shadows, they were able to lurk in the shadows, hide who they really were.

They can't any longer and they are getting frustrated, just coming out and admitting it, in any number of different ways. It's all there for you to digest. All you have to do is have the courage to believe what you are seeing. Rush Limbaugh