Two current newsmakers--the scourge of “phony soldiers” and the man a New York Times editorial today calls “The Angriest Justice”--started this week with Rush Limbaugh telling Clarence Thomas that “those of us privileged to know you and love you know a man we wish everybody knew as we do.”
If Justice Thomas is still short of being beloved, it is not for Limbaugh’s lack of trying. In a record hour and a half interview, the radio host did his best to sanctify the man who officiated at his third wedding in 1994.
It was an instructive encounter for those who know both as publicly less than loving--Limbaugh, the college dropout son of a family of Southern judges and prosecutors, and Thomas, the Catholic seminary dropout raised by a righteous grandfather he honors in his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.”
In their long embrace on the airwaves, Limbaugh, who usually trashes everybody, and Thomas, who usually resents everybody, were different people in an alternate universe of sweetness and light.
Talking about the stormy confirmation hearings of 1991, Limbaugh noted, “The thing that I've noticed--I'm not sucking up here--I don't hear any bitterness today about anything that's happened or been said about you.”
“Well, Rush, I don't really have the luxury to be bitter...When you are trying to do your best...you don't have the luxury of having those sorts of negative things in your life.”
Today’s Times editorial notes, on the evidence of Thomas’ book, that “the rage he harbors raises questions about whether he can sit as an impartial judge in many of the cases the Supreme Court hears.” Limbaugh’s venom against “phony soldiers” who are against the Iraq war had politicians trying to get him removed from the air.
But on the Rush Limbaugh show, Clarence Thomas is a down-to-earth guy who confesses he would like to drive trailer trucks for a living. They seem to have a calming effect on each other.
Very sweet.
ReplyDeleteThey deserve each other.
Limbaugh owes much of his career to the Thomas confirmation hearings.
ReplyDelete