Fun_People Archive
7 Oct
And you thought Rush Limbaugh was harmless...

Date: Thu,  7 Oct 93 13:47:29 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: And you thought Rush Limbaugh was harmless...

 From: vangogh.CS.Berkeley.EDU!bostic (Keith Bostic)
 From: dnather@bna.com (David Nather)

I haven't watched any violent uprisings or anything (so far, Bob Dole
hasn't told any Republicans to go storm the mayor's office and the TV
stations), but I can pass on some humorous stories about the Clinton
health care reform plan. One of the things we do in my unit is to sell
text of various government documents, since it takes forever to get
something directly from the government. As you can imagine, the official
summary of the Clinton health plan has been a huge seller.  But the
biggest flood of calls didn't come in the day Clinton released his plan
and spoke to Congress, or even in the immediate days afterwards -- it
started on Thursday when Rush Limbaugh devoted his afternoon radio show
to the insidious details of the plan.

Apparently, old Rush told listeners to call their congressmen to get
the health care plan, but some congressional offices didn't have enough
copies to send out, so they sent people to us.  Here are some of my
favorite comments from the "Rushheads" who called us:

1) "I want to get a copy of the 'Chillery Hillary' plan." (Apparently  
some kind of reference to frigidity, or something.)

2) "What?  You charge $25 for it?  Are you a subdivision of the  
Gennifer Flowers corporation?"

3) "Does it have the part that says physicians can't be in private  
practice anymore?"

4) "I need a copy of that Clinton abortion book."  (The health plan  
would cover abortions.)

5) "I heard that on page 16 of this plan, it says that illegal aliens  
can cross over our borders and set up dental practices here.  Is that  
true?"

6) "This plan scares me.  You know, my daughter is enrolled in one of  
those HBOs, and she never gets to choose her doctor." (And the movies  
are lousy, too.)

7) "This plan is horrible.  It's Machiavellian in scope and Orwellian  
in design."  (This really burns me up. If anything, it would be  
Orwellian in scope and Machiavellian in design.)

© 1993 Peter Langston