Rush Limbaugh on Michael J. Fox

I have had the opportunity to listen to Rush Limbaugh in the last few days because I have spent a lot of time in my car. Rush has received major coverage in the press, and on radio as a result of his attack on the Michael J. Fox ad for several Democrats during this election season.

Most of the press reaction has been feigned outrage at Rush. How dare he criticize this poor cripple? Like the 9/11 widows and Cindy Sheehan, Michael J. Fox is more infallible than the Pope and CANNOT be attacked.

I thought he handled the issue well in his broadcast. The issue is this: is the Fox ad truthful both in its facts and in the depiction of the disease that Fox has.

The first question has not been addressed by any of the media criticizing Limbaugh, and he spent considerable time demonstrating the Fox ad in not truthful. My research into the benefits of stem cell research comes up with lots of hype for embryonic stem cell research and its assumed benefits, but virtually no (at least none that I have been able to find) actual beneficial effects. And this is not because embryonic stem cell research is illegal. It is not. It is simply not supported by government funds.

Then there is the question of whether Fox is under medicated, over medicated or simply acting for the ad. Only the people involved in making the ad know for sure. But one thing is sure, Fox and the people who made this ad wanted people to see and sympathize with Fox and wanted people to believe that only Republican candidates stood in the way of a cure for Fox. This may be politics in a political season, but it is a sick brand of politics.

But since breathing, drinking, eating, religion and sex are now part of the political process, I guess I should stifle my outrage and get used to it.

I agree with Rush in this:

"Democrats are lying to sick people about cures for what ails them. It is cruel. It is mean. It is full of false hope. It's a classic dirty ad."

Click on the link to Rush Limbaugh and you can see Michael J. Fox looking "normal" and spastic. Is the difference medicine or acting? I don't know, but either way it's deception on a grand scale.

UPDATE: More from NewsBusters in the Washington Post criticism of Limbaugh:

It's sad that the Post can't focus on the factual problems in the ad. In an age when reporters routinely pick apart ads for being untruthful or misleading, this ad should be scorned in the press for making claims that are not yet scientifically accurate. Claiming conservatives oppose “life-saving” stem-cell research is, at the moment, completely unsubstantiated. Life-saving? Right now, it’s in danger of looking like the embryo-destroyer’s version of WMD intelligence. For the latest on how the “promising” research is still leading to rodent brain tumors, see the WashPost’s latest (on page A-9, not A-1) here.

Aside from the factual flaws, it has the sickening usual liberal flaw of leading with the Unmockable Victim, and thinking the facts don’t matter, especially with those emotional chicks. (Oh, the liberal consultant smirks are everywhere, no doubt.) But blaming Bush or Steele or Talent for Parkinson’s disease is akin to John Edwards claiming in October 2004 that Christopher Reeve would walk again “when John Kerry is president.” This ad is shameless, uncivil, unproven, and a very personal attack.

Michael J. Fox is, after all this victimization politics, out as America's Sweetheart, and in with all the arrogant liberal partisans who think with a quasi-religious zeal that they are on the side of Science, against those backwards Religion folks. This is, in a political sense, Michael J. Fox's Tom-Cruise-Scientology moment. He is following the L. Ron. Hubbards of stem-cell science fiction.