Rush To Judgment

Limbaugh comes out swinging:

Go out and try to tell these same people that one of their top grossing movies has influenced abject perversion or radical behavior and they will attack you left and right, saying, "That's entertainment. It stands alone. People know the difference."  You go out and accuse them of engaging in work, their art, such as crucifixions in jars of urine or whatever other acts of perversion they engage in that they call "art" -- their movies, their music -- and you go try to tell them that their music is responsible for criminal behavior. Look at the reaction you get from that.  You are considered to be a numskull, old-fashioned, out, and not with the times. They permanently, constantly insulate themselves from any influential behavior they might be responsible for and yet run off without any evidence whatsoever and admit they've got no evidence.

A good point. Culture does matter, and the impact of violent video games or gutter-level reality shows coarsens us. It's extremely hard to know where to go with this substantively, because of the First Amendment, but I sure believe that people should be held responsible for their contributions to the general culture, and he consequences of that on all their complexity. But that must surely also mean that racist, rhetorical polluters such as Limbaugh poison the culture as well. In fact, almost no one comes close to Limbaugh in terms of the violence, vehemence and demonization of his rhetoric.

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