Rush Limbaugh just can't help himself, poor old sod. Not content with being a junk-addled mouthpiece for Torquemada Inc., he just had to perform a takedown on Parkinson's Disease sufferer Michael J. Fox. Referring to Fox's on-camera commercial appeal to Missouri voters (on behalf of Senate candidate Claire McCaskill), America's Gassiest Bag said:

"I stated when I saw the ad, I was commenting to you about it, that he was either off the medication or he was acting. He is an actor, after all."

Fox's appearance in the commercial was indeed tied to his condition, a condition where one of the best hopes for a cure involve utilizing stem cells--stem cells (the so-called "snowflakes") which are slated for disposal. McCaskill's opponent, Jim Talent, is opposed to the use of stem cells for research purposes. Fox is obviously struggling during the commercial, with non-voluntary twitches and motions. It is a powerful commercial (or was for me) in that this is not just some hypothetical situation with pros and cons and blah, blah, blah. Rather, what the viewer sees is this: Michael J. Fox is afflicted with a debilitating disease--this is what the affliction is doing to him--Claire McCaskill supports stem cell research that scientists believe holds tremendous promise in finding a cure.

What is Rush's concern in all this? Does he really have a concern? Seriously, it appears as though all Rush really wants is to jump over that shark he's heard so much about. His fans won't let him, though. They snag him just as he's going airborne. "Say something awful, Rush" comes the rallying cry, and Rush struggles through the pain and utter pointlessness of his "look at me" life and then vomits up whatever the meds let him vomit up. Need someone to mock a dead veteran's mother? Rush could use the work! Want someone to kick the cripple in the legs, just to see if he (or she) is really a cripple? Rush will do it! But will Rush go too far? Will he "blow it" and lose his audience? Will he jump a shark too far?

Was Fox "off his meds" when the McCaskill commercial was filmed? If Rush really wanted to know, why didn't he ask him? Why not seek to find out an answer? Or was Rush off of his meds, and doing a little med-projecting? Reflect not, ye faithfull listeners, on the issue at hand: Rush just did the equivalent of dropping his drawers out by the sandbox, showing the other kids (who, bless'em, just can't help but love the bad boy) on the playground how to make brownies from scratch. "Look, I'm naughty! I was mean to the cripple, and still everyone leaned in just to look at my shit!"

It is the audience that determines when a shark has been jumped, but they don't always know right away what they have witnessed. Happy Days went on to shoot 100 more episodes after Fonzi did his part in the eponymous leap. Limbaugh's audience? They are uniquely positioned to view the great White Beast: they jump it with their hero almost every day.

Come on, Missouri. Rush wants to Swiftboat Fox. Is that really going to work in the Show Me State?

More about this story here and here.

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Via Crooks and Liars.

No sharks were jumped in the writing of this post.

UPDATE: Digby posted about this subject here. Apparently, Michael J. Fox's on-camera physical tics were not a result of his discontinuing his ingestion of them but rather a consequence of taking them. From Digby's post:

As it turns out, Fox's affect was caused by his medication, not his lack of it. From an interview with an expert on Parkinson's by Jonathan Cohn at the Plank:

"What you are seeing on the video is side effects of the medication. He has to take that medication to sit there and talk to you like that. ... He's not over-dramatizing. ... [Limbaugh] is revealing his ignorance of Parkinson's disease, because people with Parkinson's don't look like that at all when they're not taking their medication. They look stiff, and frozen, and don't move at all. ... People with Parkinson's, when they've had the disease for awhile, are in this bind, where if they don't take any medication, they can be stiff and hardly able to talk. And if they do take their medication, so they can talk, they get all of this movement, like what you see in the ad."

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