DEEP THOUGHT...

Who elected Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge?


These two guys earn their living by stirring up the Republican base and instilling paranoia, divisiveness, and victimization in their listeners and readers.


And now they put themselves out there as the representatives of the Republican Party, to the point of offering their advice to President Obama on how to tackle the enormously complex financial problems this country faces.



Let's look at Drudge's background [from Wikipedia] to see how he qualifies for this:


Matthew Drudge, raised in Takoma Park, Maryland, near Washington, DC, is an only child.


His parents are Jewish liberal Democrats who both worked for the federal government.


His father, Robert Drudge, a former social worker who owns the reference site www.refdesk.com and his mother, a former staff attorney for U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy from Massachusetts, divorced when he was six. Drudge went to live with his mother.


He had few friends but was an avid news reader and radio talk show fan. In his book Drudge Manifesto, Drudge reports that he "failed his Bar Mitzvah", and graduated 341st out of a class of 355 from Northwood High School in 1984, thus giving himself, in his words, a "more than adequate curriculum vitae for a post at 7-Eleven".

He was arrested on June 18, 1981, for making annoying telephone calls. After the arrest, Drudge went to live with his father on a farm on the eastern shore of Maryland. Before long, however, his father sent him back to Washington to live with his unemployed mother.


Drudge was then placed in psychiatric treatment with Jewish Social Services. It was recommended that the boy be sent to a boarding school, "and if not the last choice will be a foster home" (from court papers).


In 2006, TIME Magazine named Drudge one of the 100 most influential people in the world, describing the Drudge Report as:


"A ludicrous combination of gossip, political intrigue and extreme weather reports ... still put together mostly by the guy who started out as a convenience-store clerk."

Drudge has been called "the Walter Cronkite of his era" by Mark Halperin and John F. Harris, "an idiot with a modem" by Keith Olbermann, "the country's reigning mischief-maker" by Todd Purdum of the The New York Times, and Michael Isikoff of Newsweek said "Drudge is a menace to honest, responsible journalism. And to the extent that he's read and people believe what they read, he's dangerous."




And now Limbaugh's background:


Limbaugh was born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, the son of Mildred Carolyn "Millie" (née Armstrong), originally from Searcy, Arkansas, and Rush Hudson Limbaugh, Jr. His father was a lawyer and a World War II fighter pilot who served in the China-Burma-India theater. The name "Rush" was chosen for his grandfather to honor the maiden name of family member Edna Rush.


His family is filled with a number of lawyers including his grandfather, father and his brother David. His uncle, Stephen N. Limbaugh, Sr. is a Ronald Reagan appointed federal judge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and his cousin, Stephen N. Limbaugh, Jr., is Judge on the Supreme Court of Missouri. Rush Limbaugh, Sr., Limbaugh's grandfather, was a Missouri prosecutor, judge, special commissioner and served on Missouri's state House of Representatives from 1930 to 1932.


Education


Limbaugh graduated from Cape Central High School, in 1969. His father and mother wanted him to attend college, so he enrolled at Southeast Missouri State University.


He dropped out after two semesters and one summer; according to his mother, "he flunked everything", even a modern ballroom dancing class. As she told a reporter in 1992, "He just didn't seem interested in anything except radio."


Two things these men have in common is their poor performances in school and their inability to distinguish themselves in their respective families career traditions. They found , instead, a field where no particular educational requirements are needed--where the skills that are most important are belief in one's bombastic rhetoric and the ability to gather gossip and rumor and turn that into political lucre.


Higher education is not always the tool that will ensure success, and there are many successful people who have done quite well for themselves with just a high school diploma and a lot of smarts in other areas. Limbaugh and Drudge have done quite well financially and have millions of followers of their respective venues. However, being a popular radio personality or the host of a blog does not make one an expert in economics. Or really, anything other than entertaining folks.


Nothing in their backgrounds qualify them to advise a president on the highly complex and far reaching consequences of a multi-dimensional financial stimulus package.


Both Limbaugh and Drudge have an overinflated opinion of themselves based only on their appeal to their audiences.


The rest of the country thinks they're self-important cacafuegos.