Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight’s stories serve as an unfortunate launchpad for far-right drivel that the kidnappings could have been inspired by a T.V. show. Rush Limbaugh, the poet laureate of rambling, right-wing idiocy, suspects that the kidnapping of the three Cleveland women drew interesting allusions to an episode of Hawaii Five-0 particularly concerning the tax and welfare benefits that are “available” to kidnappers.
Although Limbaugh, the popular purveyor of pundit pestilence, admitted he had no idea what actually happened in Cleveland, he was not slowed in the least by his lack of knowledge.
“I wanna talk for a minute about these three people who have been missing in Cleveland and have been found,” he said.
The critic’s commentary, while bankrupt of empathy or consideration for the actual victims, was rife with guesswork based on the television show. If people didn’t have a reason before to ignore Rush, his blatant value of pageantry before reality should be a spark cast toward the powder keg of his self-destructive career.
The events in Cleveland and the freeing of the captured could serve as an indictment of an American temperament that encourages the notion that “good fences make good neighbors.” The unfortunate outcome though is that many will create caricatures of reality and fuzzy ideas about actually happened and what in sincerity needs change to prevent these acts in the future.
“Now I don’t know what happened in Cleveland, but I couldn’t help but make the connection,” Limbaugh droned, alluding to the episode of Hawaii Five-0 in which some women were kidnapped and kept.
The real story, the one not based or postured by a relationship to a primetime drama, is that the girls had been missing for years, in the hands of their captors, allegedly subjected to horrid conditions and brutality, and were freed thanks to a man that took notice and acted.
Joshua is a writer and researcher for Ring of Fire. Follow him on Twitter @Joshual33.