You can’t spell “klassy” without “assy”
Yesterday, I heard about Limbaugh mocking Chinese culture, and like most people I brushed it off. Getting outraged at Rush Limbaugh depletes my outrage resources, and I only have so much to expend. Thankfully, however Betty Cracker1 over at Rump Roast put together this little video featuring a claymation Limbaugh. It makes the video a lot easier to watch/hear, which isn’t saying much since it’s pretty fucking offensive.
Needless to say, Limbaugh — being the standard amount of asshole — blesses us with a 17 second imitation of The Chinese Language.
It’s offensive, yes. But what’s really embarrassing is how long he goes on:
Klassy.
Thanks for taking Rush out of the picture (as it were), Betty. Watching Limbaugh sweat and gesticulate like a crazy person is the stuff nightmares are made of.
UPDATED:
Here’s Colbert’s take on it:
The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
Rush Limbaugh Speaks Chinese | ||||
|
[transcript after the jump for you furriners]
COLBERT: Nation, the United States is presently hosting Chinese President Hu Jintao. At least I assume it’s him, it’s always possible we got a cheap Chinese knockoff. And there’s one thing about the coverage of Hu’s speech that upset me, and upset talk radio’s #1 man-dumpling. Jim?
RUSH LIMBAUGH (1/19/2011): I’m watching the news conference. … Hu Jintao is speaking, speaking, and speaking, but no translator. They wait till he finishes. And then they read what he says in toto. And of course, we don’t know. Translator could be making it all up. … When I hear Chinese or Japanese, it sounds like all the same word. And I can’t comprehend of anybody understanding it!
COLBERT: Exactly! Who on Earth could understand that kung pow jibber jabber? Off the top of my head, I can only think of 1.5 billion people. But Rush was determined to get to the bottom of this.
LIMBAUGH: I found myself trying to write down what Hu Jintao was saying in Chinese, phonetically, so that I could repeat it to you:
(in bad Chinese accent) Ching chong ching chow chong cha chong chong joo joo chon chong ching ching chong chong chong jee jee caw caw! Che chi che! Jing jong guo ma zhen zhen zhi je zhang ji! Guooooooooo ji jo la ba ba ji chi jo ja!
Nobody was translating!
COLBERT: Shocking! And shocking that no one was translating the Chinese that Rush was just speaking there! Jimmy, can we please run his Chinese through a translator?
TRANSLATOR: My favorite doughnut is every doughnut. When I stand up, my chair smells like a cat shelter.
COLBERT: Wow, for someone who can’t understand it, he speaks Chinese beautifully. Unfortunately, things then took an ugly turn. Jim?
LIMBAUGH: Hu Jintao could be telling us… who knows what he was saying to us? … (in bad Chinese accent again) We want to work together, two countries in the world, China is developing country, America developed country, but not for long!
COLBERT: I don’t know about you folks, but I am deeply offended by Rush’s cheap insensitive ripoff of my character, Ching Chong Ding Dong!
STEPHEN COLBERT (11/3/2005): (in bad Chinese accent) You so pretty, American girl, you come here, you kiss my tea, make all sweet. I no need no sugar when you around. Haha, come on my rickshaw, I give you a ride to Bangkok! Too doo loo loo loo loo, loo loo loo.
COLBERT: Come on, Rush! Don’t take my only character! You have a huge repertoire of impressions. Like black guy.
LIMBAUGH (6/22/2009): If I were Sharpton, I say, “He gon’ take from the rich, he’s gonna give it to you”.
LIMBAUGH (2/19/2010): Al Sharpton goes in da fron’ do. In an’ out da fron’ do.
LIMBAUGH (2/19/2010): Yes, I spoke a little Negro dialect there. I can do that when I, when I want to.
COLBERT: And then there’s your beloved Parkinson’s sufferer.
LIMBAUGH (10/25/2006): Well, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around (Rush flails around in the studio) and shaking….
COLBERT: (laughs) It’s funny because it’s incurable. So Rush, please, just leave some hilarious characters for the rest of us. Don’t be an impression hog. Not that you don’t do a great impression of a hog.
UPDATED AGAIN!
A call to arms from Allan:
Mrs. and Mr. Elaine Chao
Really, who is better positioned inside the Republican Party to stand up to the racism of Rush Limbaugh than Senator Mitch McConnell?
As the Senate Minority Leader and the spouse of Elaine Chao, only he combines the gravitas of senior leadership with a direct connection to the Asian-American community.
Surely a man with his power cannot stand by and watch his wife and children mocked by a circus clown who seems intent on ensuring that the GOP earns zero minority votes. I’m sure that if citizens call this racist routine to Senator McConnell’s attention, he’ll bravely step forward and challenge Limbaugh publicly.
You can reach his DC office at: (202) 224-2541
Louisville: (502) 582-6304Please use the comments to report on how your call to McConnell’s office went.
1 RACIST!!!11eleventy
1 RACIST!!112
2 Jokes, Juicers. Jokes. (I admit, bin-continent was a stretch.)
[via Rump Roast]
[WP still doesn’t like Comedy Central videos. FYWP.]
Jebediah
Oh my Gawwwd you’re taking away his First Amendment rights!11!!
I don’t like what it says about American culture that this repulsive shit-hydrant continues to be so successful.
WarMunchkin
It’s not fair, you’re taking away his right to make racist jokes by pointing out the jokes are racist (and not funny, anyway). Also, that makes you the real racist, for noticing the racism. That’s how it works.
cckids
Amen. Colbert did a great take-down of this assclown tonight. What an embarrassment to our airwaves. (Rush, not Steven)
kdaug
The continued success of this vile piece of filth is, in fact, the strongest condemnation of American culture that I can think of.
Or Beck.
OK, maybe Palin, too.
And we did re-elect W, so there’s that.
But seriously, do people think this is funny? Is there some subset who hear a fat white drug addict mock a 6000-year-old culture and think “Ha, ha, yew tell ’em Rush! Hoo boy! That language sure sounds funny to me!”
Ah. I see. Nevermind. Back to my original point: the strongest condemnation of our culture.
Please carry on.
J. Michael Neal
As awful as this is, right now, I’d forgive the man if he would just help me write some good cover letters.
kdaug
You know what? No. Fuck this.
This jackass is on public airwaves spewing this shit.
If people want to hear his bile, let them pay for it.
I’d sign on to a class action for FCC remediation. (They can do something, right)? Relegate his ass to satellite, and he can say whatever he wants. But I don’t want my (hypothetical) kids hearing him insult my (non-hypothetical) Chinese friends and neighbors (and billiards league teammates).
Seriously.
Betty Cracker
Hey, thanks for the link! Sadly, it appears my Claymation career is over. Darn kid left the lids off the Play-Doh cans.
Ailuridae
I’d sign on to a class action for FCC remediation.
Yeah me too. My Dad went full wingnut when he started a job where he traveled a lot mid day and started listening to Rush.
I’ve seen nooner and third shifters in Chicago bars slowly lose it over a couple of months listening to all that.
Donut
ABL, don’t we have better things to discuss? There are kids starving in China who would really like to haz Rush’s cheezeburger and you’re using valuable bandwidth for THIS? Also, too: you’re overly emotional.
bemused
Every time I see or hear that miserable excuse for a human being, I think of the video of him mimicking and making fun of Michael J Fox’s Parkinson tremors. Utterly shameful.
If a radio, tv, print liberal I follow did anything similar, in a nanosecond I’d know I wouldn’t ever be listening to that person again, ever. It must be some kind of Stockholm Syndrome thing going on with rightwing radio/tv fans who listen to these people constantly. There must be at least some of those fans who would ground their kids for the same behavior (or maybe not) yet they will ignore or excuse it in their idols as joking.
Rush (and Beck among so many others) have sold their humanity for mega millions.
Betty Cracker
I’m sure Limbaugh wouldn’t find the comparison flattering, but he reminds me of Fidel Castro a bit — he’s got the same ability to deliver hours-long harangues casting himself and his followers as the victims and demonizing a common enemy. Hour after hour. Decade after decade.
Of course, Castro had the balls to take up arms directly and put his own life on the line for his beliefs. Limbaugh is a chickenhawk who punked out of Vietnam with an ass cyst.
Angry Asian Guy
Every time I think I can’t be more disgusted by Limbaugh, he outdoes himself.
Unbelievable.
jon
Criticisms:
1. It cut out the part just before he did the eight-year-old’s imitation of Chinese where Rush said he didn’t want to “gyp” Fox News. Everyone knows that gypsies trick poor Christians into selling their children to Jewish families to make unleavened bread to wrap their tamales. Or do I have some of my Wingnut flash cards shuffled the wrong way?
2. As anyone who ever was eight-years-old knows, the only proper way to do an eight-year-old’s impersonation of a Chinese person requires the use of both hands to make the eyes look slanted. Does anyone doubt that Rush was doing that in the studio? Anyone?
Montysano
I was on the road this week and caught a few minutes of Beck’s radio show. It was immediately obvious that Glenn had just received a fresh (and powerful) shipment of shrooms. He was spinning a web of deceit and conspiracy that was impossible to follow. And now here’s Rush, obviously jacked up on the hillbilly heroin.
Don’t judge, people. None of us could live lives like theirs without some serious meds.
Cliff
Rushes racist rant isn’t even original, It’s the speech in martian from Mars Attacks, isn’t it?!!
Linda Featheringill
@J. Michael Neal:
Looking for a job? Good luck, dear.
YellowDog
I remember when Limbaugh was considered one of conservatism’s leading intellectuals. Given the anti-intellectualism that has taken over the Republican party, I guess he is still #1.
Linda Featheringill
@Donut:
Is this snark? Or a joke?
Racism is racism is racism.
Making fun of people because they are different is stupid and it does not make the perp look good.
Exurban Mom
Vile. The scumbag is vile.
Cat Lady
Not getting out of the boat. Even for the cartoon version. I made up my mind about that fat pig a loooong time ago.
Svensker
This. It was childish and very unfunny (some racist things can be funny if you’re not counting the racism — this wasn’t) and then he just keeps going on and on. Reminded me of the unpopular kid at school who was desperately trying to suck up to the cool kids and failing but doesn’t realize that the time to stop has long passed.
Donut
@Linda – a joke. Good gawd. And one that ABL likely didn’t need explained since it was in direct reference to ABL’s post last night re: use of the N-word at Firedoglake.
RP
Now that’s some good ol’ fashioned racism. None of that coded language silliness. Bravo!
gnomedad
Just remember: Rush is the real victim here.
cmorenc
The Golf Channel has a program called “the Haney Project” that was fun us hackers to occasionally watch, or at least was until very recently, for reasons apropos to this thread. Hank Haney is one of the best, most famous golf instructors in the world, and the premise of the program is that each episode, Haney takes on some noted celebrity possessed with an awfully flawed golf swing, and works with them to bring it up to tolerably passable level. The episode with ex-NBA basketball star Charles Barkley was the most fun to watch, both because Barkely comes across as an engagingly fun guy to hang around with and also because he has such a comically awful golf swing that even the worst hacker can think “hey, I’m better than Charles Barkely at golf”.
ANYHOW, THE HANEY PROJECT PROGRAM LOST ALL CHARM FOR ME when they announced that Rush Limbaugh was going to be the celebrity project for this week’s episode. If Limbaugh’s swing was as comically bad as Barkely’s, it might almost be perversely fun to peek in on it, but unfortunately his presence on the show reminds me too much that golf (at least golf at fancy courses with fancy instructors) is the sort of setting Republican assholes like Limbaugh are most at home in. It also reminds me that the executives for the Golf Channel consider Rush Limbaugh to be an attractive sort of celebrity for the sort of folks they consider their core audience, and makes me realize how out of place I really am in the world of country-club and resort golf.
Damned at Random
Is this guy supposed to be funny? He claims to be an entertainer – but who would find this entertaining?
I really never got the Limbaugh thing. Was he funny 20 years ago? Can someone please enlighten me.
valdemar
Fascinating stuff. In the UK any TV or radio presenter who did this would be committing career suicide. Out of a job, no question. Check out this scandal by comparison:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/07/13/nazi-jibe-radio-presenter-jon-gaunt-loses-ofcom-court-challenge-115875-22409754/
The stock response to curbs on such broadcast bigotry from our right-wing press is invariably that we are ruled by liberal fascists with their PC Gestapo etc etc, and by the way global warming is a hoax. But the more heartening truth is that, as a society, we are a wee bit less tolerant of moronic wankery than you are.
David Fud
FYI, here’s the Colbert piece. It’s worth the watch.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
A) I am more in love with you than ever for footnoting one of your footnotes.
B) I saw the original on Stephen Colbert last night and 1. you are entirely correct that the sheer length of the segment is astonishing, and 2. oh my holy God, I was just gobsmacked. The man — one of the single most powerful figures in American culture today — was suggesting that we can’t know what the President of China was saying?! That Chinese is so unutterably OTHER that the man could be saying “you won’t be top dog for long, America,” and we wouldn’t know? There’s a level of willed and blatant reality bending that — even after all these years! — is just stunning. Stunning!
Are Chinese-Americans to become the new Muslim-Americans, by the way? They cannot be trusted, by definition, because of the word that goes before the hyphen, so if any one of them tells us “Here, here’s what Hu said before the translation started, and it’s just as the translation reads” — we’re not to believe them?
I just – what?
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@RP: Also, too, this.
JasonK
And our fearless front-pager just brushed it off “like most people”. The racial nuttiness on Balloon Juice continues for day three perhaps? Let’s hope not.
Ash Can
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
I’m sure they’re just the “other” du jour. Limblow will do his routine on them until the next high-profile state visit, then the carrying-on will be about Mexicans or Japanese or Egyptians. Rush is an equal-opportunity bigot — he hates everyone who isn’t a white conservative male.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@Ash Can: (Straight. You forgot straight. I’ll bet he kind of hates Breitbart, too).
Betty Cracker
@valdemar: Well, in defense of the US, Limbaugh DID get shit-canned for another racial gaffe when he tried his hand at a mainstream sports announcer gig with ESPN some years ago. He was also barred from investing in a pro football team awhile back. I think any regular network anchor who said such a thing would be fired quickly.
TOP123
@bemused: I think you’re on to something. I consider that clip to be one of the worst of a long line of foul things done by that vile man. Not only is he mocking some truly terrible suffering, but he’s slandering a man who is doing something brave and who is actually doing good in the world. I guess it’s a bit personal to me, as my dad suffered from Parkinson’s for a number of years before finally succumbing to cancer. I was lucky enough to be able to take over a year off of work to care for him in his final illness, and I gain a whole new understanding of the expression ‘to see red’ whenever I think of that filthy clip of Limbaugh mocking Michael J. Fox.
Now here’s where I think it gets interesting: my mother, a devoted listener to the Rush Limbaugh show, whose own late husband had Parkinson’s, not only still listens to the show, but defends that schmuck whenever the story is brought up–getting angry at the one who mentions it, for accusing Rush Limbaugh of wrongdoing!
Utterly amazing… but your reference to Stockholm Syndrome gives me a good new way to look at it.
Brachiator
Wow. Rush, a race baiting piece of dung, steals a bit that Shaquille O’Neal once took heat for:
It will be interesting to see how conservative pundits try to wriggle out of this one.
Frank
Brachiator #36 — Will they? Will conservative pundits
try to wriggle out of this, or will they simply say that some of us have no sense of humor, that we are overly-sensitive and playing the race card?
This clown has been successful for, what, 20+ years? I recall when he was a local (Sacramento)radio personality — his schtick really hasn’t changed. So does this mean that 20% of Americans are hopelessly, congenitally stupid and beyond intellectual redemption? Maybe 30%? 40%? At what point do we simply have too many stupid people to chart a half-way intelligent course for this country? Or will Rush eventually stroke out (not that I would wish such a thing) and disappear? More likely he will simply be replaced with a newer version. These conservative pundits have been propagating like Tribbles lately it seems!
Allan
Join me in making calls to the office of Senator Mr. Elaine Chao, aka Mitch McConnell, asking him to defend the honor of his wife and family against Limbaugh’s racist attacks.
Angry Black Lady
@Donut: oh suuuuuuuuure. and your screen name is donut!? have you been stalking my kitchen? this is an outrage!
gimme back my donuts!
(oh crap, i said that in mel gibson voice. i think that means i’m secretly anti-Semitic.)
Allan
@Brachiator: Don’t forget how Fox News rushed to defend the honor of Chinese people against the shocking racism of Rosie O’Donnell.
Angry Black Lady
@JasonK: the tone of your comment (snarky? not snarky?) makes my response tricky, but: yep. i did brush it off because there’s no use getting in a snit every time rush says something offensive since i’d be in a permanent snit.
i tend to brush off blatant racism from the right because it’s expected. when it comes from the left, it is (as i believe ruemara said yesterday) more heartbreaking.
kay
@Allan:
I was looking at the Asian press (who have picked this up) and they use this phrase, over and over:
“Obama’s Democratic Party”.
I was hoping they’d use “Limbaugh’s Republican Party”, because it’s, well, true, but they didn’t. It’s just Obama and his Democratic Party versus Rush Limbaugh.
They don’t have any quotes from Republicans because Republicans are too scared to say anything on the record about Limbaugh.
It’s funny to read. Republicans don’t exist.
handy
@Ash Can:
Fixed for more precision.
Bex
@Brachiator: By claiming their leader was speaking in tongues.
Angry Black Lady
Added the Colbert clip. Tried to anyway.
FYWP.
Brachiator
@Frank:
This counts as a wriggle.
As an aside, I always love it when conservatives moan about somebody supposedly using the race card, when the racists owned the entire stacked deck of cards.
But in addition to any issues of insensitivity, the Rush incident demonstrates again that some people have just lost their minds since Obama’s election, and also that the GOP has lost control of mindless ideologues like Rush.
I can’t imagine why Limbaugh would think it funny to mock the head of a foreign nation, a leading trading partner and a country that may soon overtake the US as the most productive country in the world. Unless, it is white man’s anxiety that another nation, and an Asian nation may overtake the US as Number One Global Leader.
Let’s hope that the Chinese leader either doesn’t know who Limbaugh is, or doesn’t care at a meaningless slight uttered by an irrelevant moron. On the other hand, it would be interesting if someone in the Chinese delegation spoke to Obama Administration officials, and asked why American leadership tolerates stuff like this and doesn’t simply have Limbaugh thrown in jail. Cause you know, human rights only go so far.
JasonK
@ABL:
Yeah it was snarky. And my apologies for the snark. Those last couple of threads put me in a funk. But that’s no excuse for the snark so again my apologies.
That being said I don’t care where the stuff comes from. Stupid knows no bounds. And the fact that Limbaugh has such an easy way to get these messages out there…
As the father of two bi-racial children (as noted in my other posts I’m a white guy…my wife is African-American) all of this stuff pisses me off no matter where it comes from.
Angry Black Lady
no worries. it was a rough one yesterday.