Africa Andrew Sullivan Arizona bear Catholic Church Catskills Christianity Denning Dostoevsky fall Giant Ledge Gothamist Jesus John Byron Kuhner John Kuhner Jung Kentucky Latin Louisiana love Mardi Gras Miami Mississippi River nature New Orleans New York New York City Obama Occupy Wall Street Ohio Reginald Foster Religion Richmond Hill sexuality Shakespeare simplicity snow South Africa spring Staten Island Staten Island or Life In the Boroughs Thoreau Venice Wendell Berry winter
Small government is big business.
02-Mar-09“One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat [the Democrats] is with better policy ideas,” – Rush Limbaugh
“Small government” is just a business slogan at this point. It should be given a trademark symbol like “Nodoby Beats the Wiz (TM)” to remind people that it’s just a slogan, with no content whatsoever. It’s an ad pitch for the entertainment industry known as talk radio. And that’s all talk radio is, another entertainment industry. Rush has a lot in common with “those Hollywood types” after all.
But there are lines, and you cross them at your peril. I remember getting angry in the 1990s when I heard the CEO of Ford say that he considered his line of work to be “the entertainment industry,” explaining why Ford’s main focus was car “features” rather than building good, cheap combustion engines that moved people from place to place safely and efficiently. “This guy’s an idiot,” I thought. “Someone’s going to let him have the entertainment industry and they’re going to take the automobile industry for themselves.”