Welcome to The Hoosier Illuminati. Macintosh bigot, clothes horse, motorsports fanatic (as long as they turn right), Anglophile.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance. --Henry Ward Beecher

Rush on Michael J. Fox

I didn’t intend to say anything about this, but since it just doesn’t seem to want to go away, why not?

Rush was right the first time.  Michael J. Fox has admitted to appearing while off of his medication in order to exaggerate his condition and make it appear that he is more ill than he is, and that he did this purely for the shock value.  It was not out of bounds for Limbaugh to suggest that he might be doing it again. 

He’s appearing in commercials for a candidate who has voted against funding fetal stem cell research while suggesting that electing the Democrat candidate is an obvious plus for such research.  It’s fair to call him on this. 

He admits to not having even read Missouri’s cloning/stem cell amendment, despite stumping for it in campaign ads for a Democrat, he has no idea what the thing even says. 

Worst of all, he would like for you to believe that stem cell research is illegal, and is illegal because evil Republicans made it so.  No and no.  Stem cell research is not, nor has it ever been, illegal.  What is illegal is federal funding of such research.  Our friends down the road at Eli Lilly can pour as much money into stem cell research as they’d like and absolutely no one is going to stop them.  In fact, if there’s as much promise for a cure from such research as Drs. Fox and (John) Edwards would like for us to believe, Lilly should be pouring money into it by the billions because freedom from disease is just right around the corner, right?  Fox’s tremors will stop and Christopher Reeve would have gotten out of that chair and taken a jog. 

The fact of the matter is that for once the Administration is absolutely right about something.  They’re allowing the private sector to spend money on research, and they’re keeping the government out of it.  Is that the politically correct attitude?  Of course not, the PC thing is to go awwwwwwwww when we see our friend Alex P. McFly in the shape he’s in and charge the government with eradicating this disease once and for all.  But that’s not the government’s job, that’s private industry’s job, and they do it in a far better and more financially responsible fashion.  If Fox wants to make the maximum effort he needs to be working with private foundations to raise real money to pour into research with a company that stands to reap a metric buttload of reward by selling curative medications. 

Michael J. Fox is not unassailable.  When he steps out of his role as actor and into one that is political, he has to be willing to accept everything that comes with that, including speculation about his truthfulness and his motivations.  I do not know how ill Michael J. Fox is, nor does Rush, but it’s fair game to ask the question.  Particularly so when there’s precedent for Fox exaggerating matters by voluntarily going off the medications that control his symptoms. 

I grant you, Rush has little in the way of tact or finesse, but separate the message from the messenger for one moment and observe that the fundamental basis of his argument is sound and correct.  No one wants to talk about that though, only that Rush is a big mean asshole for making fun of Fox. 

At least Mark Foley is happy about the Limbaugh flap. 

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