Ethics/Sanity

I thought this was interesting, particularly considering that it came up in the last Consumer Behavior class. For those of you who haven't seen Rush Limbaugh's response to the Michael J Fox stem cell research ad, you can see it here. You only have to watch the first 2 minutes or so to see the whole thing.

Then his response is here:

LIMBAUGH: We had a call yesterday, and I dealt with this yesterday, and I will deal with it again today as often as I have to, because there is an irresponsible charge, and an irresponsible misuse of video from my ditto cam here – by the way, welcome to all of you watching on the ditto cam today — there is an irresponsible charge that I was making fun of Michael J. Fox, and that I said Michael J. Fox was faking it. Neither of those two charges have any foundation of truth whatsoever and, yet, they continue to be leveled and they continue to be distorted and amplified upon

There's something strangely Orwellian about hearing somebody deny something that I've seen on video. A live webcam. From his own show. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.

William Saletan on Slate then talks about how Rush has become psychotic, that the world he inhabits is not the same as reality. The question is how did this come about? I'm really thinking it may be an offshoot from what is effectively Marketing Communications; stay on message 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

This is obviously not just a right-wing thing. If you watch the documentary "Our Brand is Crisis" you can see James Carville's political consultants fall into exactly the same trap while getting a Bolivian politician elected as President. They either start believing the crap they are peddling more than what they see with their eyes. Or they don't care.