Where angels fear to tread

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110128/ap_on_en_ot/us_limbaugh_asian_americans

Okay, it is not news that Rush Limbaugh is a jerk. I'm betting in his more honest moments, Limbaugh would admit he's compensated quite generously to be a jerk.

In an ideal world, someone would have looked at him after he busted out his ching-chong routine (and by the way, Rush, you're no Sid Caesar), somebody would have said, "Duuuuuude." There's a great power in that word. It can pull a person back from the edge of jerkwadiness. If used appropriately, "Duuuuuude" can save a situation from certain social disaster. Even in talk radio it is a custom. Robin Quivers is compensated generously for applying the "Duuuuude" when Howard Stern goes to the outer edge of jerkwadiness.

But I've been there. I remember one specific incidence where someone referred to her sister's fiance as "you know, a ching-chong Chinaman." There were literally so many things wrong with a woman in her 20s saying that, I just completely froze. My engine was so flooded, I not only couldn't think of anything appropriate to say, I couldn't think of anything to say at all. "Duuuuuuude" was beyond my powers of speech.

These little landmines of racism just lay in casual conversation. Someone that you know thinks that way, but you think has enough sense not to voice it, will just casually throw it in. Or even someone you think of as a reasonable human being will go to the ching-chong place. Or the beaner place. Or the watermelon place. Places where most of us have the decency, if not only the sense of self-preservation, to go.

But some people feel that expressing themselves in this way is their right as an American. Free speech. But all freedoms have prices. And the fact that you voice a racist, insensitive pile of manure, comes with some people will think you're a jerk, and use their freedom of speech to tell you so. Freedom is not free.

Not that you care about my opinion. But, you're a jerk, Rush.