A Rush-an Revolt

Like many Nebraska teenagers, Mark and I both detassled corn to line our young pockets. While my two years on the crew were marked with laughter, pranks and generally fond memories, Mark's detassling stories are rough and ugly. He describes his crew in chain-gang terms, rabid and always teetering on disaster. My favorite of Mark's detassling stories is a rough one as well, but one with a corn-silk silvery lining.

A bully dominated his bus, a mean weasle who wreaked havoc the way a boy's gym locker just generally reeks--with great and sordid consistency. Each day, this bully would hassle one kid in particular, the proverbial 99-pound weakling. Each day, the weakling took it, while the rest of the guys cowered quietly in their pleather seats.

. . . until the last day, when the weakling simply had had enough.

That day, as both bully and bullied left the bus for one last time, the little guy turned to the weasle, grabbed his arm and promptly snapped it in half, as a choir of boisterous cheers broke loose aboard the bus.

Surely, 61-year-old Rush Limbaugh would've had his arm broken by now. Surely, by now, someone would have delivered the message to him that it was time to behave like a grownup.

By now, one would think, the American public would have grown tired of a man who sits alone in a sound booth, day after day after day, hiding behind a microphone, beholden to no one except his sponsoring corporations, saying anything he darn well pleases, as though looking out at the world from an insulated room somehow gives him insight and courage.

As much as I'd like to snap his arm, I have another, even greater hope for Rush Limbaugh. I hope that his mother is no longer around to hear her son's poisonous tongue. I hope he has no children, no young people who must--time and again--explain their father's red-faced rants. And I have hopes for his wives, his co-workers and his friends (does a talk-show host who never has guests have co-workers? Or friends?). I hope they all have tinitus, and are no longer able to discern the blubbering notes of his lumbering voice.

We can do better than Rush Limbaugh. And I'd say today is as good a time as any to begin that journey.

So, let's turn the dial together and find a new station to listen to.