VivirLatino

Last night I got a steady stream of tweets and facebook updates promising one of the most astounding things I had read in a long time. Rush Limbaugh was dead. Supposedly, he had gone into a Hawai’ian hospital with chest pains and the Good Lord called Rush home.

Turns out that the only parts that were true were the chest pains and hospital.

For now, Rush Limbaugh is very much alive.

I am neither disappointed nor happy the man is still alive. My feelings for him are neutral. Which is surprising, given his feelings about me.

What has been very interesting to me is reading what other bloggers, tweeters and facebookers have had to say about Limbaugh–and what they’ve had to say about what others have had to say about Limbaugh!

From Womanist Musings:

There is not much that is redeemable about Limbaugh. In fact, the issue really shouldn’t be about whether he lives or dies but what values we choose to uphold. It is hypocrisy to claim that we have respect for life and agency and then wish for the death of another. How is this different from being upset that Limbaugh wished the failure of Obama?

For the most part, on a moral level, I agree with Renee. But I had to admit to seeing the political side of the people who posted what they did about Limbaugh being dead. When disenfranchised people glory in the death of an oppressive force–is that really the same thing as the oppressive force glorying in the death of the disenfranchised? Or, in other words–maybe the comparison here should not be so much between two groups of people where the assumption is that both groups are equal. Maybe the comparison should be between people glorying in Limbaugh’s supposed death, and say, Palestinians supposedly glorying in the death of U.S. citizens during 9-11.

Does anybody have the right to tell a violently oppressed group how to react to their violator’s death?

I am not even going to pretend that everybody who had something to say was from a group targeted by Limbaugh. And I am SO not trying to compare a bunch of relatively privileged U.S. citizens to survivors of colonial violence.

I’m more trying to question the belief that the oppressed group must always maintain a “morally superior” agenda. Why? Why is moral superiority so essential to leftist type of organizing? It has been around since at least the 1960′s with the church based Civil Rights movement. We shall not strike back when we are hit. We shall forgive our brothers than violently oppress us. We shall strive to distance ourselves from the filth and squalor used by white supremacy to deny us agency.

Do we really have to be morally superior to deserve “freedom” (whatever we may feel that freedom may be)? I am not arguing that Renee is arguing that we *need* to be. In fact I think Renee would probably agree with me that it doesn’t matter who or what you are or what you’ve done–there are just human rights that every human is entitled to no matter what.

But I do feel like the “morally superior” argument should find a quick death because it is so easily used against truly violated populations like Palestinians, “illegal aliens,” single mothers, prostitutes and others. With the consequences being that “good” drug users (as an example) deserve help (for example, Rush Limbaugh)–and “bad” drug users who are homeless and maybe beat their partners should just be locked up and forgotten about.

But I know the morally superior argument has essentially been a long standing battle in communities of color (think: MLK versus Malcom X). What do you think? Is it ever ok to glory in the death of others?