June 17, 2010

Rush Limbaugh's ongoing assault on family values continues.

This ugly excuse for a human being actually went on the radio and went off on hungry children in the US. Whether he likes it or not, hunger becomes a real problem when children don't have even a school lunch because many children rely upon the federal school lunch program to get their one decent meal a day.

Here's what Limbaugh said:

God, this is just -- we can't escape these people. We just can't escape them. They live in the utter deniability of basic human nature. They actually have it in their heads somehow that parents are so rotten that they will let their kids go hungry and starve, unless the schools take care of it

Sometimes it's not a question of "let". Sometimes it just "IS".

There's more:

I think, you know what we're going to do here, we're going to start a feature on this program: "Where to find food." For young demographics, where to find food. Now that school is out, where to find food. We can have a daily feature on this. And this will take us all the way through the summer. Where to find food. And, of course, the first will be: "Try your house." It's a thing called the refrigerator. You probably already know about it. Try looking there. There are also things in what's called the kitchen of your house called cupboards. And in those cupboards, most likely you're going to find Ding-Dongs, Twinkies, Lays ridgy potato chips, all kinds of dips and maybe a can of corn that you don't want, but it will be there. If that doesn't work, try a Happy Meal at McDonald's. You know where McDonald's is. There's the Dollar Menu at McDonald's and if they don't have Chicken McNuggets, dial 911 and ask for Obama.

There's another place if none of these options work to find food; there's always the neighborhood dumpster. Now, you might find competition with homeless people there, but there are videos that have been produced to show you how to healthfully dine and how to dumpster dive and survive until school kicks back up in August. Can you imagine the benefit we would provide people?

The idea of this fat bastard SOB ridiculing hungry children by telling them if they just look in the kitchen cupboards they'll find Ding-Dongs, Twinkies, Lays ridgy potato chips and all kinds of dip just makes me sick. It makes me want to deface his pudgy ugly picture.

Let's look at what it's like to be a child whose only reliable meal is a hot lunch. This was written by a friend of mine. I keep it bookmarked and read it weekly to remind myself to have gratitude that my children aren't hungry, aren't cold, have a home and their basic needs met.

Via MOMocrats (It's a little long, but well worth the read):

But going hungry — that is a different story. That's waking up in the morning hungry. Feeling, throughout the day, hungry. Lying in bed not able to sleep just yet because you are hungry. Dreaming about feeling hungry.

And there is not any trip to the taco place down the street and not a trip to McDonald's instead and not a trip to the farmer's market or the grocery store, either, because there is no money for those things. There is not even the option of a trip to the backyard for some homegrown tomatoes or cucumbers or strawberries because there is no yard when you live in a run-down apartment or a shelter or a car.

There is only your hollow-eyed mother who is hungrier than you are dividing the last stale crackers to make them last. Assuming that you are lucky enough to have a mother. And crackers.

And the going part of going hungry means of course that you keep going this way. That despite the aching hollow in your belly and the listlessness that overtakes you brain, you do keep going — to school or to work or to the streets or at the least from one side of an empty room to another. You keep waking up in the morning and going about your day as best you can as if you were not hungry. Because the world expects it of you, because you are ashamed to admit you are hungry, because your body holds some sort of ancient optimism that there will be food again around some corner, because, after all, what else can you do?

You don't forget going hungry, and I know that you don't forget it because I was once a hungry child and some of my earliest and most indelible memories are of going hungry. Of feeling motivated by hunger. Motivated to suck on a lone slice of pickle for hours just to keep the feeling of food in my mouth. (I can still taste that pickle when I think about it. I was four.) Motivated to think that someone else's trash smelled like food. Yes, hunger motivates people.

This is what that fat bastard ridiculed. Made fun of. Children without even the most basic food and shelter.

So I don't leave you on a downer, here is the happy ending to Jaelithe's story:

But you see, it was the free school lunches I qualified for, in those early days, when I was hungry, that kept enough glucose in my brain that I could pay attention in my classroom. It was the knowledge that her children would still eat if she went back to school that allowed my high-school-dropout teenage mother to spend my early childhood finishing her college degree instead of working at McDonald's. State-sponsored food, given to me at a crucial time by the fine state of Missouri, helped lift my family out of poverty.

I never want to hear any fan of Rushbo ever -- EVER -- tell me they believe in families and family values. Not today, not tomorrow, not next week. Rush Limbaugh is an evil, ugly man. Supporting him is an evil, ugly act.

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