Rush to Judgement

I was seated at a restaurant bar yesterday having a late lunch, when in walked four old crusty guys who had been dinning together for the better part of six hundred years. The waitress knew them by name and without even asking, got them their daily poison and placed it, ice-cold in front of them.

They ordered without benefit of menu and seemingly assured as to exactly what they were going to receive from the less-than-busy kitchen. In the corner of the bar stood a flat-screen TV with Fox News blaring away. None of us paid much attention to it until the story about Rush Limbaugh losing his corporate sponsors came on.  Everyone agreed that he screwed up. Everyone said so. Everyone that is, except Earl. Earl was a hold out.  “What’s the big deal?” he asked his friends.

They all tried to articulate what it was they didn’t like or thought that the Big Mouth had done wrong.  They were getting nowhere fast.  So I interjected, “What, Shit For Brains here can't figure it out himself?”

Earl wheels in his seat and was seething at my calling him that name.  I said, “Oh, you don’t like being called Shit For Brains? Well that is exactly what Rush did to that young woman.  He spewed out horrific insults and pejoratives at her, then when it came time to apologize, did a half-assed job at that, so bad in fact, that even Don Imus called it lame. So you don’t like being called ‘Shit For Brains,’ think how she felt being called out on national radio by The Mouth and vilified as a slut and a whore.

“At least we were giving you the benefit of the doubt.  Shit for Brains assumes you have some form of brains.  He didn’t give her that much wiggle room.”  His buddies were howling. The old boy was shaking and he spilled his soup he was so mad. Spilled it all over his lap. “You see how it is to laugh at Rush instead of taking it seriously. Today he calls someone a slut.  We laugh. Tomorrow he slips and says we need to kill the President and some half-wit follows his direction. He is a dangerous man. He’s Joe McCarthy without a senate oversight committee.”

I shut up and went back to my salad. The laughter died down and one guy of the three said, “You know, Earl. He’s right.”

Earl didn’t say anything he was shaking so hard. “He’s right about all that name calling. And about Rush.  Rush is the one he should have called Shit for Brains.” They laughed again.  I was quiet. Earl said nothing. He was fuming mad. He had been called out for supporting a bully. He had been made mockery of for siding with a coward. And his friends knew it. Worse – he knew it.

I finished, called the waitress over and quietly paid for the four men’s lunch and I left. I wonder how old Shit for Brains felt when the waitress said, “Oh your bill was taken care by that young feller sitttin’ over thar.”

I just hope he was shaking mad because he saw the folly in his ways. But in the end I knew he probably didn’t. He was just embarrassed that someone had called him for what he truly was.