“I am rubber, you are glue…”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones…”
“You’re not the boss of me!”
Over the years, I have often enjoyed the sheer simplicity and transparency of children’s debates. I know that words have power, but never do they hold as much power as they do for kids.
In a lot of ways, this is the epitome of magical thinking. For a child, words can literally alter reality. In the middle of a sweaty, physical game of tag, the phrase “time out” magically puts the world in a state of suspended animation. After a heated bout of name-calling, the phrase “I take it back” can magically produce forgiveness. At just about any time, the words “oh yeah???” can magically transform an angry boy into a master of wit on par with Oscar Wilde or Winston Churchill. And the word “Mom!!”, loudly drawn out into 3 or 4 syllables, can magically end a brawl faster than any known diplomatic technique.
And then we grow up.
Sort of.
There’s nothing like election season to show that we never really grow up.
The magical phrase that I’ve been hearing so much lately is “Yeah, but, well, they did it first!”
It’s been going on for years. For the last couple of years, we’ve been hearing Democrats complaining about the childish, disrespectful, obtuse things Republicans say about President Obama. The magical defense? “Yeah, but, well, you said bad stuff about President Bush!” And then the Democrats say “Yeah, but, well, you said bad stuff about President Clinton!” And then the Republicans come back with “Yeah, but, well, you said bad stuff about President Reagan!” And it goes on and on. Remember back in 1322 BC when supporters of Pharoah Horemheb heiroglyphed “Yeah, but, well, you carved bad stuff about King Tut on that obelisk!”
Classic.
This phenomenon has infamously returned in the latest kerfuffle-du-jour from Rush Limbaugh.
If you’ve somehow managed to miss this story, let me help you out: Rush said some things. Oh, and the “West Indies” turned out to be not India at all, Galileo was right, and we didn’t find green cheese on the moon.
Anyway, as is usually the case, Rush has his defenders… and they seem to be falling into two camps. In one camp, we have the folks who are defending his freedom of speech. Essentially their argument goes something like this:
Rush is an astronomical gas bag (on the level of a red giant) with a catastrophic lack of self-awareness, the empathy of a ball peen hammer, and a wondrously absent ability to discern fact from fiction, context from dirty limericks, and irony from industrial waste… but as long as he doesn’t break any laws, he has the right to say whatever he wants.
I’m with them – the First Amendment is a pretty cool deal, and unlike many politicians and pundits, I don’t think I get to decide which groups of Americans don’t have access to it.
It’s the other group of Rush defenders that have inspired my verbose rant: the ones who resort to the aforementioned childish magical thinking:
How can you be upset at what Rush said? After all, what about Bill Maher or Louis CK or whoever put Michele Bachmann’s googly eyes on that Newsweek cover? They did bad stuff, too!
The point being, other people said/did bad stuff sometime, so that makes what Rush said/did OK.
We could go on and on about logical fallacies and false equivalencies and the principles of rhetoric – but why bother? A person who would sincerely use that kind of argument has fully internalized the magical thinking – which is a very effective innoculation against logic.
The thing is, I’m not entirely convinced that everyone who uses that argument is truly earnest… I believe (or perhaps I should say hope) that many folks are just a bit lazy – or distracted – or busy – or just wanting the conversation to be over. They use the magical words because it’s easy. It’s a habit – they don’t really mean it.
Does the average person truly believe that the fact that Bill Maher said some incendiary, misogynistic things means that what Rush said was OK? Truly? Do we really think that mean things said about President Bush in 2007 justify saying mean things about President Obama in 2012? Truly?
I just don’t think so. Maybe I’m naive.
The fact is, if I say hateful things (like my gas bag comments about Rush earlier in this rant), they’re hateful things. It just doesn’t matter what anyone else said before – my own bad behavior is my own bad behavior.
So – if you feel a need to defend Rush, consider taking a couple of aspirin. If you still feel the need, maybe move from that magical thinking camp into the First Amendment camp – you’d at least have something close to reality as a foundation for your argument.
We know when something is wrong. We don’t have to compare it to something else – and we don’t have to rely on magical thinking to justify it.
Oh, and “I know you are, but what am I???”