Limbaugh

by hilzoy

You've probably already heard that Rush Limbaugh said that Michael J. Fox was faking his symptoms in the ad he shot for Claire McCaskill:

"Now, this is Michael J. Fox. He's got Parkinson's disease. And in this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it's purely an act. This is the only time I have ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has. I know he's got it and he's raising money for it, but when I've seen him in public, I've never seen him betray any of the symptoms. But this commercial, he -- he's just all over the place. He can barely control himself. He can control himself enough to stay in the frame of the picture, and he can control himself enough to keep his eyes right on the lens, the teleprompter. But his head and shoulders are moving all over the place, and he is acting like his disease is deteriorating because Jim Talent opposes research that would help him, Michael J. Fox, get cured. (...)

So this is really shameless, folks, this is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting, one of the two."

And you've probably also heard that Fox's tremors aren't the result of not taking the medication but a side effect of taking it. In other words: Limbaugh is, as usual, full of it, and a jerk to boot.

But if you haven't yet seen the video of Limbaugh saying these things, you really should. He's flailing around, doing what I imagine is supposed to be an imitation of Michael J. Fox, but in fact looks more like an octopus having a seizure. It's really jawdroppingly appalling.

What has always amazed me about Limbaugh, and some other similar commentators, is how they manage to convince their audiences that they are on the side of morality and decency, when if one thought for a moment about what they actually do, as opposed to the alleged dreadfulness of the people they are describing, it would be pretty clear that morality has nothing to do with them. It's the same paradox you find in any hate-filled demagogue: as long as people listen only to what he is saying about others, and focus on those others and their sins, he is popular in a way that he would never be if people just stopped and asked: what does the fact that he spends all day whipping up hatred and spreading calumny say about him? And why would I listen to someone whose idea of morality seems to involve nothing but anger, contempt, venom and self-righteousness?

Often, it's illuminating to watch someone like that with the sound turned off. But this video could do the trick as well. It's really awful.

And Michael J. Fox's response, which is also on the video I linked to, is a complete contrast: gracious, generous, and somewhat self-effacing. (I didn't think much of Sam Seder, though -- he comes on about halfway through the clip, and as far as I'm concerned I might have stopped watching then.)

Another minor point: suppose, for the moment, that Limbaugh had been right to think that Fox's twitchings were caused by Parkinson's, not by the medication, and that his going off meds would have exacerbated them. I think it's fascinating that Limbaugh believes that for Michael J. Fox to stop taking his medication, to show the effects of his disease unfiltered, would be in some way dishonest. As far as I can tell, that's a lot like saying that people with disabilities ought to hide them from the rest of us; that showing themselves as they are, with their disabilities in plain view, is automatically manipulative, or an attempt to play the victim. I would have thought that someone with a serious and disabling disease like Parkinson's had enough on his plate without having to satisfy Rush Limbaugh's requirements on how the disabled should comport themselves. Shows how much I know.

Comments

[Jesurgislac]

jcricket: What's even more ironic about Dirk Benedict's support for the macrobiotic diet (which he claims cured his prostate cancer) is that a non-trivial portion of the macrobiotic "leadership" has died of the cancer their diet supposedly cures.

So, a non-trivial portion of cancer sufferers died of cancer.

I'd say "color me shocked" but is that appropriate in this thread?

[dutchmarbel]

Matt: have you seen this musicvideo comparing old and new BSG series?

[Slartibartfast]

So, a non-trivial portion of cancer sufferers died of cancer.

Hmmm...you understood macrobiotic "leadership" to mean cancer sufferers? I was eating macrobiotic back in the mid '80s, but I had no idea that cancer sufferers owned it.

Live and learn, I guess.

[matttbastard]

Dutch: thanks for that - had forgotten how sextacular Lorne Greene was.

:-)

[Phil]

That would be a stunning statistical case against macrobiotic diet if a) it were true, and b) the sample size was nontrivially large.

Well, no, it would be a stunning case against "macrobiotic diet as a cure for cancer" vs. "macrobiotic diet as what somebody prefers to eat."

[Slartibartfast]

Well, no, it would be a stunning case against "macrobiotic diet as a cure for cancer" vs. "macrobiotic diet as what somebody prefers to eat."

Well, if everyone on macrobiotic diets was dying of cancer, I'd say it condemns the diet. Unless everyone on the diet started out having cancer, or had elevated cancer risk to begin with.

See also here.

[jcricket]

Slarti - Check out the Wikipedia entry for macrobiotics. Besides the diet making no scientific sense (there is no evidence that the basis on which foods are picked as "good" or "bad" is supported. Any benefits are coincident or a result of very low calorie intake), the level to which it was (at least once) touted as a cure for many diseases is pretty irresponsible.

I would agree that for most "normal diets" this number of people dying of cancer would not, in any way, be significant. But when the creators and proponents of the diet (including Dirk Benedict) claim the diet cures your cancer, and then people on the diet keep getting and dying from cancer, it's a pretty simple denunciation of their claim.

And no, this has nothing to do with this thread, except to attack Dirk Benedict's credibility.

[Slartibartfast]

the level to which it was (at least once) touted as a cure for many diseases is pretty irresponsible

Possibly; I'd never seen those claims. I'd been exposed to macrobiotic diet, as I said, back in the mid 1980s, and besides noticing that it shared some footing with Eat To Win, among others, I had no idea that it was touted as any miracle cure.

I'd only pick nits here:

But when the creators and proponents of the diet (including Dirk Benedict) claim the diet cures your cancer, and then people on the diet keep getting and dying from cancer, it's a pretty simple denunciation of their claim.

I'd say this: that the cancer death rate among practicers of macrobiotic diet may be condemnation, or may not be, depending on how those people got on the diet in the first place. If there was some a large test group that was subjected to A macrobiotic diet and a control group that ate normally, I'd agree that a statistically significantly higher cancer death rate in the macrobiotic group would signal the opposite of their claim. But suppose more people who had already contracted cancer were swayed by the cure-claims, then one would expect that if the diet did nothing at all as regards susceptibility to cancer, the cancer death rate would be much higher than in a random sampling of people irrespective of diet.

But I tend to fall into the camp that says diet and such can help a bit, but not necessarily cure. Proponents of such viewpoints tend to take a few cases of remission and credit it to X, where X is the thing they're selling.

My sister was involved in the whole Hallelujah Diet thing, including the Amway-esque marketing of the products, and I've seen enough of that sort of thing to have developed a sort of immunoresponse to it.

[jcricket]

My issue, btw, is now with practitioners at large, but the "leaders" of the diet. My basic assumption is that the number of people on a macrobiotic diet who get cancer will largely mirror the general public. I can say that because I don't believe the diet has any effect on most cancers.

It's one thing to claim "this diet might help you get less cancer" and another to claim "this diet cures cancer" or "you won't get cancer on this diet". Should you claim either of the latter, and then die of cancer later, you'll have to excuse my Schadenfreude after years of you actively deceiving other people.

I say this as someone who works at a research center that does study cancer. It looks like 30% of your chances of getting cancer are purely genetic, 40% are environmental (so don't smoke, don't work in a coal mine, etc.) and the rest is probably some combination of "chance" (i.e. stuff we don't understand yet, but that's not really random) and stuff under your control (like diet).

Because of this, I'm like you. I have a response to the whole selling of fake cures, especially when couched in the language of "nature".