I'm almost saturated with MSNBC for this campaign cycle and still watch it only for the long denouement. What bothered me yesterday was their willingness to equate talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly with Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio as spokesmen for the Republican Party.
Limbaugh for sure, and I suspect O'Reilly as well, are simply entertainers -- cynical entertainers -- who spin their foul ideas simply to make money. They are equivalent to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who at least admit they're comedians, not to elected public officials. It may be true that politicians quiver in their shoes at the prospect of Limbaugh or O'Reilly banishing them from the circle of acceptable conservatism, but until someone with enough courage to call their bluff finally prevails, they will continue to have real power of censorship.
The most ridiculous statement of the week, though, obviously belongs to Marco Rubio, dodging a question about the earth's age by saying I'm not a scientist, man. This is a dispute for "theologians," a "mystery" we may never know the answer to. Patent nonsense. I was suspending judgment on Rubio, but no more. He is dishonest and hypocritical in this response and now I tend to believe he deliberately burnished the false history of his parents' flight from Cuba. Hopefully his lies will catch up with him before he becomes a serious candidate for president.
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