Weekly Review

Hours before Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm, destroyed 90 percent of the structures on the Caribbean island of Barbuda, Rush Limbaugh, a talk-radio host who has said that the United States needs “segregated buses” and that former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton castrates men and keeps their genitals in a “testicle lockbox,” went on the air and said that “these storms are never as strong as they’re reported.”^[1][2][3][4] Limbaugh said that “the real man-made disaster” from Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 storm that killed at least 70 people in Houston, was not physical damage but “liberalism,” citing in particular the Occupy Wall Street movement, whose agenda he once described as securing the right to “urinate on other people.”^[5][6][7] “Some in the media are lying,” said Limbaugh, who also claimed that “like 30 percent” of people who came to the United States as undocumented children are “hardened criminals,” and who, after a 28-year-old man from Florida shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, said it was “unconscionable” how “the media” had used “racist” and “hate-oriented” attacks on the shooter, who was “unable to fight back” because he had no microphone.^[8][9] Limbaugh said that a group of Republican lawmakers who were photographed meeting with U.S. president Donald Trump to discuss raising the federal debt ceiling and funding a $7.9 billion hurricane-relief package were “out looking for the Earth’s clitoris,” a reference to a college professor who has sex with nature, and whom Limbaugh has covered at least two times.^[10] “This woman undoubtedly believes that Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are part of climate change and the Earth doing something sexually,” said Limbaugh, who has also argued that feminism was “established” to allow “unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.”^[11][12] Limbaugh, who has called women who take birth control “sluts,” said he coined the term “feminazis” in the 1990s to describe people who were “intolerant.”^[13][14] Limbaugh, who has said that he “loves the ‘women’s movement’” when he’s “walking behind it,” said that Trump, who claimed he “wasn’t interested” in Paris Hilton when she was 12 years old, was “not a pig”; Limbaugh, who referred to himself as “El Rushbo,” said that Trump, who once said the length and beauty of his fingers had been “well documented,” was “not a buffoon”; and Limbaugh, who once said that Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease was “purely an act” and that it hasn’t been “proven that nicotine is addictive,” said that Trump, who once said that “we need global warming” because “it’s freezing and snowing in New York,” was “not an idiot.”^{[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]} Limbaugh said that he was not “a meteorologist,” that he was “the go-to guy” for hurricanes “bearing down on South Florida,” that local reporters who cover hurricanes conspire with businesses to sell bottled water and television advertisements, that there was “just no way to predict where these storms are gonna go until probably the day before,” and that he was evacuating his Palm Beach home, two days before Hurricane Irma was expected to make landfall in Florida.^[24][25] Limbaugh said that he was “not a climatologist” and discussed the sales ranking of former U.S. vice president Al Gore’s book about climate change, titled An Inconvenient Sequel, which he described as “wrong about everything.” “Number 23,000 at Amazon,” said Limbaugh, whose first book, The Way Things Ought to Be, is ranked at number 481,165 on the same list, and whose subsequent book, See I Told You So, is ranked at number 943,470.^[26][27] Limbaugh said the NFL has a “lack of concern” for “what’s happening” in “middle America,” where “the people who like statues,” fly Confederate flags, and “hate illegal immigration” live.^[28] “They hold ’em in contempt,” said Limbaugh, who once said that the NFL “looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons,” that there is “nothing factual about Black Lives Matter,” that former U.S. president Barack Obama is a “halfrican American,” that “all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson,” that the NAACP should “get a liquor store and practice robberies,” that the NBA should call its teams “gangs,” that a subscription service for African-American movies was “a break for all those on welfare,” that a black woman who called in to his show should “get that bone out” of her nose and then call him back, that “all this white guilt” needed “to end” because “if any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it’s Caucasians,” that Planned Parenthood is “doing the job the Klan could never finish,” and that the killing of 86 million indigenous Americans, whom he occasionally refers to as “injuns,” was nothing for survivors to “complain about.” “They all have casinos,” said Limbaugh, who is the most listened-to radio host in America and whom Trump has described as “fantastic!”^{[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]}

Sign up to have the Weekly Review delivered to your inbox.