Thanksgiving turkey

By Capt. Fogg

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes it's just what it looks like. Sometimes, when the fat man sucks on it, all hell is smiling. 

The true story of Thanksgiving is how socialism failed,

said Rush to a caller, and President Obama is hiding that fact behind an honest account of history. No, that's not just a cigar, and of course we didn't get tobacco from the Indians -- what are you anyway, a communist? 

Rush Limbaugh has long since run out of relevance, run out of ways to prove that president Obama is a Kenyan, anti-colonial (would he rather have him be a pro-colonial?), Muslim-Christian extremist who hates white people and is an avowed communist, atheist, trotskyite, racist, anti-Christ, ultra-liberal fascist. He's exhausted every epithet of every stripe -- and it seems he's now reduced to the even more pathetic state of turning the most mundane acts of traditional presidential sentiments and statements into fuel for his bonfires.

Lapel pins, terrorist fist bumps, leave that to the Girl Scouts. Rush Limbaugh is the Big League. What would have been, to anyone else and by anyone else, a tepid, ritual recognition of the long-standing American myth that the Plymouth colony was helped in adapting to the harsh climate and unfamiliar environment of 17th-century Wampanoag territory by some of the native people living there, the myth taught to schoolchildren for at least a century, filled with inaccuracies, and covered with a sloppy whitewash, turns in the cigar-sucking mind of Mr. Limbaugh from a third-grade pageant into a damnation of Mr. Obama. In the White House thanksgiving proclamation, the president says: 

A beloved American tradition, Thanksgiving Day offers us the opportunity to focus our thoughts on the grace that has been extended to our people and our country. This spirit brought together the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe -- who had been living and thriving around Plymouth, Massachusetts for thousands of years -- in an autumn harvest feast centuries ago. This Thanksgiving Day, we reflect on the compassion and contributions of Native Americans, whose skill in agriculture helped the early colonists survive, and whose rich culture continues to add to our Nation's heritage. We also pause our normal pursuits on this day and join in a spirit of fellowship and gratitude for the year's bounties and blessings.

Jesus Christ. No, really -- Jesus Christ. this could be a Sunday Sermon preached somewhere in Middle America to a pastel congregation painted by Norman Rockwell. To the Palm Beach tycoon, however, it's occasion for a racist sneer about Indian casinos:

So, we were the invaders, we were incompetent idiots. We didn't know how to feed ourselves so they came along and showed us how and that's what Thanksgiving is all about.

Tell that to every school kid who had to make Pilgrim and Indian costumes complete with anachronistic flintlock blunderbusses and buckled shoes -- the America hating little bastards. 

He says nothing about the Constitution in his Thanksgiving Day proclamation because he's got a problem with it,

Limbaugh continued to rant, and in the absence of any supporting information for it, failed also to tell us how a document written nearly 170 years afterward would be have any relevance to the Thanksgiving holiday other than one only obvious to a malicious, neurotic saboteur grasping for any wrench he can toss into the works of truth, honesty, and human decency. 

But, of course, thanking a long-ago vanished tribe, acknowledging the cultural tributaries of our nation, and being grateful to whatever name one attaches to providence that our country ever came to be, is no more a qualification for venomous condemnation than saying good morning or asking what time it is. Failing to mention the Constitution of 1789 means no more than failing to mention the Emancipation Proclamation, and it says nothing about Obama or the United States of America founded so many years later and mostly by other people.

The only uniting element in this or any Limbaughean argument is the desperate attempt to make Obama an "America-hating" alien in order to make sure we continue making the same arrogant, ignorant mistakes we pridefully ignore. If the president came out against slavery and wife-beating we could be sure Rush would show us just how this was the one-way door to communism and the terrifying notion that Rush may have to earn an honest living. But Rush reveals so much with every word:

Somebody is toying with me. Somebody is seeing if they can get one past me. Somebody is trying to take advantage of me being not as focused on the day before Thanksgiving and falling for this prank.

That's right, it's not about an alliance of convenience between the Wampanoag and a ragged group of Englishmen who had suffered serious losses in the previous winter, it's about Rush. The president isn't following tradition, isn't being aware of history, isn't telling the truth, isn't being a general good guy in that love thy neighbor and let's work together and can't we all get along mold. He's trying to trick Rush, take advantage of Rush, and interfere with Rush's millions, with the profits of his betrayal of my country, the malignant, hyperbolic fabrications intended to sabotage everything good and decent and true. 

No, it's true, Rush. You're right. The long, slow, and erratic movement toward freedom and responsibility and justice you're trying to retard is only something designed to get around you and your mission. There's nothing else behind it but an attempt to "get around" you, and Obama's not the only one. We're all trying to trick you, and in fact history is trying to trick you, the truth is trying to trick you, and, come to think of it, Satan himself is trying to trick you into thinking that's just a cigar.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)