The Kansas Jayhawks sporting events used to be broadcast on 98o AM KMBZ. It was humorous when you consider the political climate of Lawrence, KS compared to the on-air rantings of Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, who both have shows in the afternoon on that particular station. Thus, though the ideology of the station differs quite a bit from my own, its sports coverage earned it the coveted fourth spot on my AM station list. Even when KMBZ lost KU sporting events, it ended up keeping its place on my preset list if for no other reason than I had no other AM station to replace it.

Sometimes I even hit that Number 4 just to see what's going on over at good old 980. Usually, I find the banter entertaining if nothing else. And while stations like that tend to broadcast people who are over the top to the point where they are caricatures, you can still filter through the propaganda to pick up a few interesting points. Kind of like Bucky Katt. Some one should give that guy a talk show.

Then there was Friday. The day I randomly tuned into The Rush Limbaugh Show, only to have my ire raised by some of the most offensive and redonkulous political commentary I have had occasion to hear in quite a while. Rush was railing on the "Chicomms" (his term for the Chinese Communists) because of the numerous product recalls of Chinese imports that have come up in the past weeks. "The Chicoms must realize that they NEED America" was the gist of his rant.

First of all, "Chicomm" crosses the line. The minute I heard it I had a sick feeling. It's obviously a term of derision used to group and ridicule an entire ethnicity, and is just straight up inappropriate. It's also a tired cold-war era trick used to position American Capitalism as superior to all other social systems. It should not be an acceptable label, and I will call anyone out who uses it.

Secondly, Rush's outlook on the relationship between The US and China is whacked. I've been reading quite a bit about this lately, and I'm more than a little convinced that China is positioning itself to become the next preeminent world power, thus knocking us from our throne. There is a good chance that the US will take a step backward in this respect soon, and that our position in the world will look a lot like that Britian's currently does. There is no shame in that, though I don't know that most Americans realize that a ballooning trade deficit, military goals that are unachievable in respect to the strengths and weaknesses of our military, and a lack of creativity with our international stances really put us in jeopardy. Not in jeopardy of complete and total destruction, but in jeopardy of not being the undisputed Top Dog anymore.

But people like Rush lull us into this idea that we still hold all of the chips. They won't tell us that China is propping up our economy, but that when a significant middle class is built in that region that they won't need our economic infrastructure as much anymore. They won't admit that China's political reputation is changing for the better, and if they can get their human rights violations cleaned up that they will have then removed a lot of the international criticism that comes their way.

I'm not one to run around yelling that the sky is falling. But I do think we don't do ourselves any favors when we don't look around the world and really survey what's going on. And though we might try to devalue other groups through racial slurs and hate language, they will keep on doing what they are doing. It seems as though it would make more sense to give them props and work with them than ridicule them. But I obviously don't know anything, because I don't have a nationally syndicated radio show.

Fair Dinkum