Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:01 pm
Yesterday Rush Limbaugh went on the attack against hungry children on his radio show. Limbaugh criticized the school lunch program, and he suggested that if kids have no food at home and can’t afford McDonalds, they should dumpster dive, “There’s another place if none of these options work to find food; there’s always the neighborhood dumpster.”
Apparently to Limbaugh, nothing is funnier than child poverty via Media Matters:
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Limbaugh said, “This, of course, takes into no account that the parents, I guess, just can sit around and let their kids starve. Why if the kids don’t do it, they’re gonna starve — if the schools don’t do it, the kids are going to starve….God, this is just — we can’t escape these people. We just can’t escape them. They live in the utter deniability of basic human nature. They actually have it in their heads somehow that parents are so rotten that they will let their kids go hungry and starve, unless the schools take care of it…You know, one of the benefits of school being out, in addition to your kids losing weight because they’re starving to death out there because there’s no school meal being provided, one of the benefits of school being out, college campi being vacant this time of year, is that our audience levels go up.”
Limbaugh suggested that kids look in their refrigerator for food, or barring that kids should, “Try a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. You know where McDonald’s is. There’s the Dollar Menu at McDonald’s and if they don’t have Chicken McNuggets, dial 911 and ask for Obama.”
If this doesn’t work, Limbaugh laid out another option for poor children, “There’s another place if none of these options work to find food; there’s always the neighborhood dumpster. Now, you might find competition with homeless people there, but there are videos that have been produced to show you how to healthfully dine and how to dumpster dive and survive until school kicks back up in August.”
In the United States, 12.9 million children live in poverty. It is estimated that 16 million children won’t have enough food to eat this summer. For these kids, the school lunch program is a vital, and in some cases their only daily meal. The fact that kids go to bed hungry in America every night is not a topic for humor. It is a national disgrace. Only someone as rich and out of touch as Limbaugh would find starving kids to be funny. It is emblematic of Limbaugh’s detachment that he thinks these children can just go to the kitchen or to McDonalds for food.
Limbaugh claims to speak for the common man, but he has no idea how much regular people are struggling, especially during this recession which was kicked into gear by the economic policies of George W. Bush that Limbaugh cheered on. Rush Limbaugh has no clue what it is struggle. The man is simply ranting from his insular bubble of wealth. The next time Limbaugh claims to speak for the common man, ask how many regular folks live in a house like this?
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
