Guest-hosting again for Rush Limbaugh, Mark Davis explained how President Obama's remark about whose “ass to kick” wasn't a big deal. Of course, he then spent much of the show discussing it, describing it as “mid-level vulgar” and opining that it reveals Obama's "charade of toughness and authoritativeness." Davis stated that he doesn't want the president to use such language in public -- even if it were a president he did vote for -- but he also said he “loved” when Vice President Dick Cheney told Sen. Pat Leahy to "fuck yourself" on the Senate floor in 2005. Perhaps the vice presidency is a position better suited to strong language. Davis later said that had Sen. John McCain made a similar mark, it would have been “spun differently” but that Matt Drudge's headline about Obama “go[ing] street” was a characterization that "works." A couple of callers complained that Obama's remarks set a bad example for children, and Davis agreed, saying that it's hard to get kids to “keep a clean mouth” when the president publicly uses strong language.
When he wasn't belaboring the “ass to kick” comments, Davis took time to repeat some tired conservative talking points. He told listeners that Social Security should be “optional for everybody” and that we should “get rid of [the Department of Education] and the Department of Commerce along with it.” He later stated that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's views are “grotesquely antithetical” to the Catholic Church, of which she is a member, and he wondered how Catholics vote for pro-life Democrats. Davis later complained: “I want to get back to when the worst thing I would say about a Democrat president is that we disagree on the issues.” He seemed unaware if the irony of him saying this on a show that attacks the current Democratic president daily with falsehoods and outrageous rhetoric.
During the third hour of the show, Davis stated that opponents of Arizona's recently passed immigration law have “for craven political reasons elevated this Arizona law into something it is not,” and he assured listeners that the only effect of the bill would be to improve the quality of life in the state. Davis wrapped up the show with a discussion of the “overwhelming inappropriateness” of plans to build a community center that would include a mosque near Ground Zero. Davis voiced skepticism that the American Society for Muslim Advancement actually intends to, as he put it, “bring Islam into the 21st century” and distance itself from violent extremists, but even if the group did, he said, such a facility would be “tone-deaf and wound-ripping” in that location, adding that it would be OK somewhere else in Manhattan.
Some highlights from today's show: