The Right Word: Talk radio’s pharaoh fury | Sadhbh Walshe

Ingraham regrets Obama is US president, Limbaugh wishes he were Egyptian president and Michael Savage thinks he’s Lenin As violence in Egypt escalates and the death toll mounts, conservative radio hosts are growing increasingly concerned about the crisis of leadership here in America. Laura Ingraham Laura Ingraham was nonplussed by what she felt was a wimpish response from President Obama to the uprising, and was wistful for bygone days when America knew her place in the world ( listen to clip here ). “What did I say on Monday: if you don’t know who you are, then it’s difficult to lead in a time like this. If you don’t know really what your country’s purpose is, whether really we’re any better than any other country, then it’s really hard in a situation like this where you have all these other moving parts.” To demonstrate how things could be if we only had the right kind of president, she played a clip from a speech given by former President Ronald Reagan offering his unequivocal support to the Polish solidarity movement during their struggle for independence from Russia. Ingraham, who admitted to being half-Polish, totally understood how important it was for the struggling people of Poland at the time to have the American President behind them. It was essential to nurture these movements in order to ultimately wrestle them from the grips of the Soviet Union and encourage the people on the ground, who were good people and who had a lot of courage to stand up against the old Soviet stranglehold on that country. It took an enormous amount of courage and they received that jolt of bravery and that inspiration from an American leader who understood how important that was, who basically said I’m there with you. It wasn’t a mixed message. But lest you think, as I briefly did, that Ingraham was going out on a limb as the lone conservative voice urging more American support for the courageous protesters on the streets of Egypt, who are risking their lives in the hope of a better one, know that it was only the style of Reagan’s message that she wished Obama would emulate (that is, “America is in charge”) and not the substance (“America supports your cries for freedom”). She clarifies her position later when she discusses the matter on the O’Reilly Factor, with political consultant Dick Morris. They both agreed that the current administration seems to be “bored with foreign policy” and did not sow the seeds on the ground in Egypt during the past two years for a secular movement to emerge; and now we are “opening the door to Islamic fundamentalist domination”. Morris went further and said that we should be going more aggressively against the protesters, that it was a mistake to have urged the military to stand aside and that we should not have requested pro-Mubarak supporters to refrain from violence. (He must be relieved now to know that they have ignored this particular request.) He also said that Obama seems to only “oppose America’s allies and not our enemies”. Ingraham was in full agreement. It seems like they have been pretty good at giving hell to our friends and criticising them quickly, but the people who actually do not have America’s best interests at heart and actually want to destroy and kill our enemies. It’s giving them every benefit of the doubt and that’s where I think this whole thing breaks down. There’s this utopian idea that this is all going to turn out and people are going to reach their aspirations, as President Obama said last night, but look at these pictures we’re seeing. Is this the people reaching their aspirations? Ingraham might want to take a leaf out of her hero President Reagan’s playbook about not sending mixed messages. Rush Limbaugh Rush Limbaugh was also perturbed by President Obama’s handling of the Egyptian riots ( listen to clip here ). “OK, Pharaoh Obama’s ordering Mubarak what to do.This is after Mubarak says he’s vamanos . After Mubarak says he’s leaving, he’s getting out of there in eight months, Obama gives a speech to claim credit for it.” Limbaugh was angered by Obama’s assurances to the people of Egypt, particularly to the youth, that America was on their side and he was not buying the current story line (put forward even by some commentators who could not be dismissed as “far left loons”) that the situation in Egypt is delicate, to say the least, and that the president has to walk a tightrope. What tightrope here? I’ll tell you what tightrope. Obama’s taken credit for the mob, folks. Why else do the speech? Trying to take credit for Mubarak stepping down which was supposed to end all the protests, or at least ratchet them down. These guys are clamouring for new leadership. OK, Pharaoh Obama comes in, makes it happen. Fine, everybody goes home, except they are not going home. They are ramping up. They are getting more violent. The numbers are increasing, and the signs are more and more written in English. Rush, then, proposes his own radical solution to address both countries’ leadership crisis. Why don’t we send Obama over to Egypt to be their president – and don’t tell me he can’t run for president of Egypt because he wasn’t born there. I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to hear that. Apparently, he can be president anywhere he wants to be. Maybe a movement to get Obama’s name on the Egyptian ballot. He likes it over there, went over to make his speech in Cairo. Just think of the fun they would have getting Obama to produce his birth certificate. Michael Savage Savage thinks Obama’s interference in the Egyptian uprising (or lack of interference, depending on his mood) is a recipe for disaster ( listen to clip here ). “Remember the phrase, if you want to make an omelette, you’ve got to break a few eggs. You know who said that? I believe it was Karl Marx [sic] , and Karl Marx said if you want to make an omelette, you got to break a few eggs – in this case, the eggs are Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and then Israel. Because if international Marxism can make the new omelette, meaning the new world order, where the capitalists continue to rake in the trillions, then, my friend, it’s a new theory, is it not?” For someone with so combative a nature, Savage is strangely unsettled by revolutions and seems to believe that, in general, they are of no benefit to the people revolting. He cites the French revolution of 1789 as an example of a movement that backfired horribly on the instigators (though, in fairness, the majority of French people today do have fairly decent jobs, healthcare and universal access to nice wine and cheese). Back to the present day, Savage tries to make the point that dictatorships are not always a bad thing. I have never seen a consistency, as I have now seen, between the quote “left” and the “right”, the conservatives and the liberals, all of them are lost; they’re all babbling the same thing; they’re all saying these are legitimate grievances of the pent-up demands of the people. They’re making Mubarak into the worst dictator in history. They’re making him worse than Ahmadinejad. It’s astounding to listen to this, and they’re only so much I can listen to until I explode. Why is it they’re always on the side of communist tyrants and never on the side of, let us say, different types of tyrants? In the end, though, as far as Savage is concerned, it doesn’t really matter who’s right or who’s being wronged in Egypt or elsewhere. There’s no point trying to fix what’s already broken. Lenin says [sic] if you want to make an omelette, you got to break a few eggs. And I think that our president, being a lifetime Leninist, is breaking a few eggs. In this case, the eggs are Tunisia, Egypt Jordan and Yemen. But I will tell you this, there’s a dozen eggs in a normal package and if you think that this egg is going to remain whole, you are mistaken. I’m guessing Savage doesn’t like his eggs scrambled. Egypt Talk radio Radio US television Protest Barack Obama Obama administration Republicans Ronald Reagan US politics US foreign policy Middle East Sadhbh Walshe guardian.co.uk

Posted by on February 4, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry