Rush Finds New Low in Mocking Michael J. Fox

October 31, 2006 | Posted by admin

Here is a great op/ed piece I found while browsing Google News today.

By Margaret Carlson

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) — There was a time when politics wasn’t a blood sport.

At the end of the day, Tip O’Neill shared a whiskey with Ronald Reagan, and Senators George Aiken and Mike Mansfield had breakfast daily. Now it’s routine to call your opponent a liar, a coward, or an al-Qaeda operative.

Last week, the public debate hit a new low when radio talk- show host Rush Limbaugh accused actor Michael J. Fox of being a fraud.

Limbaugh claimed that Fox — aka Alex Keaton of the television program “Family Ties” and diagnosed in 1991 with Parkinson’s disease — was faking his symptoms in a series of campaign ads on behalf of candidates who support embryonic stem- cell research. “Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting,” Limbaugh said.

In a streaming video from his studio, Limbaugh can be seen faking the symptoms of a Parkinson’s patient as he waves his arms and bobs his head.

Fox’s ads were already getting good play before Limbaugh’s attack. Fox, looking like the boy next door — if the boy next door were being buffeted by an unseen hurricane — quietly asks voters to back candidates who support federal funds for research that might cure him and others.

One ad ran in Missouri, where Republican Senator Jim Talent is locked in an unexpectedly close race with challenger Claire McCaskill and where voters are being asked whether their constitution should be amended to protect embryonic stem-cell research. In the ad, Fox says: “Senator Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that gives us a chance for hope. They say all politics is local, but that’s not always the case. What you do in Missouri matters to millions of Americans — Americans like me.”

For Enjoyment

After Limbaugh suggested that Fox enjoyed being a victim, the ad went global, getting far more air time than a candidate could buy. The spots were rebroadcast on the news and zipped around the Internet. George Stephanopoulos played the ad on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program, while Katie Couric interviewed Fox on “CBS Evening News” on Thursday night.

When it was clear that Limbaugh had hurt himself more than Fox, he made one of those non-apologies beloved by politicians in which he couldn’t resist adding that even if Fox weren’t playing sick, he was still shilling for Democrats and allowing “his illness to be exploited.”

To blunt the backlash, the Republican Party sped up production of an ad that began airing on Tuesday. It features actress Patricia Heaton and James Caviezel — who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s film “Passion of the Christ” — as well as several sports figures. The ad claims that the Missouri measure would make cloning legal and lead to trafficking in embryos.

Thanks, Rush

Maybe this is the year, for folks like me with a brain- injured loved one, when the issue sways voters. Just before the 2004 presidential election, the death of paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve, who had played the role of Superman, gave the issue a moment of prominence. But that was nothing compared with the attention that Limbaugh’s tirade has generated.

HCD Research Inc. and the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion surveyed 955 people nationally on Tuesday and Wednesday and showed that support for stem-cell research jumped 5 percentage points after they saw Fox’s television ads.

Imagine if Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine, were deprived of federal funds because a minority of Americans said scientific research was against their religious beliefs. There would still be kids in iron lungs today. Few breakthroughs occur today without some backing from Uncle Sam.

Afraid of Yuppies

If destroying embryos is murder, why can’t the right wing and President George W. Bush, who used his first veto ever to withhold federal funds for stem-cell research, go after yuppies pursuing in vitro fertilization techniques that discard embryos by the thousands? Because they would be crushed at the ballot box. It’s safer to pick on sick people.

Usually a candidate can’t bat down all the negative stuff being flung at him. And it’s not easy to push back against Limbaugh, who claims 20 million listeners per week. But the popular, mild-mannered Fox is the man to do it.

It wouldn’t have been surprising if Fox had retreated from the public eye after his diagnosis. It takes little more than the onset of a double chin for most movie stars to go into hiding or under a surgeon’s knife. Shortly after announcing in 2000 that he was giving up his hit sitcom “Spin City” because he could no longer hide his convulsive movements, Fox set up a foundation and began using his lingering celebrity to fight for patients.

I’m That Guy

One of the tragedies of Parkinson’s disease is that the medication has diminishing returns over time and can bring on the erratic movements it’s supposed to mitigate. Fox knows he’s fair game in this fight. On CBS, Fox told Couric, “If bringing the message means the messenger gets roughed up a bit, I’m happy to be that guy.”

Democrats are no strangers to going negative. But they are pikers compared with Republicans, who have perfected the craft. Think about the infamous Willie Horton ads. Or the one that showed Senator Max Cleland, who lost his legs and an arm in Vietnam, morphing into Osama bin Laden. Or the outsourced campaign by the Swift Boaters to smear decorated Vietnam veteran John Kerry as a braggart and coward.

Limbaugh has gone further this time. When faced with the prospect of losing, people and parties reveal their dark side. Limbaugh isn’t a cruel man, but he was desperate last week.

(Margaret Carlson, author of “Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House” and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net .
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