Limbaugh Fill-In Walter Williams Says [Insert Insane Statement Here]
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
By Kate Conway
Sitting in for Rush Limbaugh today was George Mason economics professor and conservative columnist Walter E. Williams, who immediately dove into an absurd and uninformed commentary on Rand Paul's statements about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. His first contribution to the discussion was an attempt to redefine discrimination as the act of choosing. He illustrated his point by equating racial discrimination with being discriminating in his choice of wife, weakly joking that he “harmed” the women he “discriminated” against by denying them the opportunity to become his wife. Suggesting that people who disagree with his position on the Civil Rights Act might feel “white guilt,” he then directed listeners to a section of his website granting “amnesty and pardon ... to all persons of European descent.” Williams wrapped up this section of the show by discussing for nearly ten minutes the discredited idea that the free market would have eventually eliminated racial discrimination as it if had merit.
In the second hour of the show, Williams ranted about “salt tyrants,” stating that a tyrannical precedent was set by “anti-tobacco zealots.” He claimed in passing that an FDA study finding secondhand smoke to be harmful to your health was “fraudulent,” and said that the FDA and the Obama administration have taken the position that what the American public wants is irrelevant -- if you disagree with them they'll fine you, put you in jail, or put you out of business. He suggested that we will reach a point at which salt will be so regulated that schoolchildren will be asked to inform on their parents' salt intake, and told a caller who said she had a medical condition requiring extra salt consumption that she might have to get a prescription for salt. In an unrelated absurdity, Williams suggested that perhaps on top of the single vote every American is already entitled to, for every additional $20,000 in income tax a person pays he should get one additional vote.
Williams started out hour three with a bang by suggesting that secession might be an appropriate course of action for those who feel that the government interferes too much in private affairs. He compared the problems facing the country to a marriage in which one partner has broken the marital vows and said that, rather than staying together and fighting, a more peaceable solution would be separation due to “irreconcilable differences.” He stated that secession need not always be violent, absurdly citing, among other examples, West Virginia's secession from Virginia during the Civil War. Williams then spent most of the rest of the show lauding free markets, claiming that they benefit poor people much more than regulated markets. To illustrate his point, he claimed that in poor neighborhoods some people have nice (and supposedly free-market) cars but the government-run schools are universally bad. Williams' free-market enthrallment apparently runs so deep that he actually concluded the show with an argument against child labor laws, stating that if poor families need their children to work to earn money they should be allowed to do so. When a caller objected to Williams' rationale, saying that he wanted his children to have the opportunity to be educated, Williams told him it was better to be uneducated than to starve. Laws that once protected children from mines, he said, now just protect them from air-conditioned offices.
Here are a few highlights from the show:
Limbaugh fill-in Williams grants a “pardon” to those who “feel a sense of white guilt”
Rush fill-in Williams warns of “tyranny” of salt regulation in processed foods
Rush fill-in Williams tells caller: “I believe in keeping wives under control”
Limbaugh fill-in Williams asks caller: “Why don't you want child labor?”
Sam McCann contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.