Cruel and Usual Punishment

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Weingarten's Experiment in Action

Investigative humorist Gene Weingarten endures 24 hours of constant punditry, and lives to write about it.

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Both Rush and Bill start out by disclosing that, earlier that day, Jane Fonda had used the c-word live on NBC's "Today" show; it went unbleeped and at least initially unapologized for.

Somehow, I'd missed it. Fortunately, the gaffe is all over the Web in streaming video, and, yes indeed, here she is, Hanoi Jane herself, the bete noire of right wing radio, flagrantly uttering the unutterable. Clearly, Rush and Bill are courageously willing to address this shocking and distasteful subject even at the risk of driving their audiences into multi-orgasmic rapture.

Limbaugh joyfully eviscerates Fonda and moves quickly on to other things, but O'Reilly is in high dudgeon and is all over this reprehensible event. He's morally outraged, and seems to want to wring all he can get out of it, as though it were, say, a luffa sponge.

As someone in the broadcasting business, he says, he doesn't want to become "the scold police," but he wonders just the same if someone ought to call the FCC and demand punishment. (Later at night, on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor," he will devote an entire segment to the issue, practically sputtering in exasperation when he can't persuade his guest, lawyer Anita Kay, to agree with him that heads must roll. Kay will point out, reasonably, that Fonda wasn't using the word in a hostile manner; she was simply stating the actual title of one of the monologues from the play "The Vagina Monologues," which is, ironically, about how the word should be destigmatized.) B-b-but "this is the most vile word in the lexicon of obscenity!" O'Reilly protests. Laughing, Kay basically tells him to calm down and grow up, that the average 12-year-old girl has heard this word, and it's no big deal. It's my favorite moment of the day. (Anita Kay, the cure for the common scold.) The peril of listening to Limbaugh and O'Reilly at the same time is that you tend to compare them, and these are dangerous waters for an unapologetic, unreconstructed New Deal liberal like me. The comparison makes you actually like Rush. He's funny; O'Reilly is not. Limbaugh teases and baits his political adversaries; O'Reilly sneers and snarls at them. Limbaugh is mock-heroic; O'Reilly is self-righteous. So, when Limbaugh speculates that the Democrats in the House committee went after Roger Clemens because liberals hate cherished American institutions such as churches, the Boy Scouts and baseball, you know he's sorta kidding. When O'Reilly says liberals who oppose torture of prisoners just don't care how many people will die in a terrorist attack, you know he's as serious as an aneurysm.

Bathed as I am in my new, grudging affection for Rush, I nearly miss out on the experience of witnessing, on live TV, the explosion of a genuine Washington foofahaha.

Foofahahas are half foofaraw and half brouhaha. They occur on Capitol Hill with some regularity, identifiable by their momentary intensity but fleeting duration; typically, they cause a flurry of speechifying and accusation launching, dominating the day's spin cycle. Then they instantly disappear like water in the sand. In this case, congressional Republicans have staged a walkout that had the effect of disrupting the memorial service for Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor and human rights activist. Democrats say the Republicans were disrespecting the memory of a great man; Republicans say they were forced to do it because of a devious, cynical procedural maneuver by the Democrats, who obviously had less regard for the saintly Lantos than the Republicans did. Blogs light up. Each side thinks the other sucks. They are fighting for the moral high ground, which in this case appears to be overrun with weeds.

Meanwhile, The Fix is quoting an unnamed Democratic strategist who says Hillary's best option may be to go negative. The left-leaning Daily Kos is accusing President Bush of "holding another fear-mongering news conference in yet another attempt to scare the living daylights out of the American people for no good reason." But the right-leaning Corner says the president is absolutely right.

The Pentagon reveals it is going to try to shoot down an American spy satellite that is falling out of orbit and contains potentially hazardous fuel. This is met with huzzahs from the pundits on the right, who see this as an affirmation of U.S. technological superiority and a bold strategic message to potential enemies. It is greeted with enormous skepticism from pundits on the left, who mistrust the president, envision an environmental catastrophe from the dispersal of some sort of poison mist and believe we aren't being told the truth about why we're shooting this puppy down and that the real reason probably hides some diabolical administration malfeasance. Each side thinks the other sucks.

A caller named Esther tells O'Reilly he is handsome, and O'Reilly thanks her. A caller named Gary tells Limbaugh he is "an American genius," and Limbaugh playfully adds that he is also a narcissist. Sucking up, Gary then volunteers to Rush that he, Gary, is "so conservative I make Bonnie and Clyde look like Dale Evans and Roy Rogers." Rush wisely lets this inscrutable statement go unquestioned.

Something is bothering me, here as I approach Hour Nine. It's this damned thing with Rush.

It's complicated, but here it is: There's something real about all this palaver all around me; in its own overheated, perfervid way, it's inspiring. You can't get away from that. Unfettered discourse is the sign of a robust democracy. It's a genuine war of ideas out there, being fought by highly committed people who care about the world. And I am no conscientious objector. I'm not a witling. I have opinions. There are timeless truths; there are friends and there are enemies; there is right and there is wrong, and, by God, Rush is wrong. To admire Rush in any way is to consort with the enemy. It's treachery. It's siding with them.

I focus on Rush once again and finally notice something. A toehold.