You catch more flies with honey than with stale-cigar-smoke-scented-conservative-man-sweat. Rush Limbaugh smells nothing like honey, and Hillsdale College should stop advertising on his partisan show. He limits the college to an image that does not match what professors teach and students believe. Continuing to advertise on the show gives the school a polarizing public image, preaching to the conservative choir while alienating others.
Advertising on the show ties the college to Limbaugh. In doing so, Hillsdale tacitly lends an endorsement to his message. Linking the school to such a visible and inflammatory entertainer will hurt our reputation every time Limbaugh decides to attack his political opponents ad hominem — like he did to Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, calling her a “slut” after she gave a speech supporting insurance coverage for contraceptives. By using Limbaugh as a mouthpiece for the college, we lose credibility and sound like a bunch of gun-toting nut-jobs. At best, the college opens itself to unfounded criticism for supporting Limbaugh’s personal beliefs by continuing to pay for ad space.
Limbaugh represents a specific political view. He believes that his anti-liberal one-liners are actually answers for the complicated problems America faces. He’s a caricature of a conservative. His willingness to play the part makes him too ridiculous to take seriously. His endorsement of Hillsdale College will limit the audience of the online courses to conservative individuals who are looking to advance the ends of a political party, not to learn.
While many people here identify themselves as Republican, the college is based on an older understanding of the Republic, and is not an explicitly political entity. Hillsdale College was founded a full decade before the Republican Party came into being in 1854. Advertising on Limbaugh will convince many that we have a political instead of an educational agenda in offering online courses.
Limbaugh is an entertainer who does political commentary. His show exists only to exacerbate political differences between liberals and conservatives, not to create solutions for political problems. While he is free to use his show as he pleases, Hillsdale doesn’t need the endorsement of such an agitator.
Worse still, Limbaugh doesn’t share Hillsdale’s perspective on education. When he isn’t busy attacking college students on his show, he is arguing against much of what Hillsdale College believes about education. In the episode of his show “Deciphering the Sad-Sack Story of a Classical Studies Scholar,” Limbaugh wondered “what the hell” a classics major is (he concluded it must have something to do with Dickens). He then denounced it as a useless propaganda tool of socialists, liberals, and postmodernists.
“Colleges lie about the happiness and the jobs and the money that awaits you after you get the degree in something like Classical Studies,” Limbaugh said.
But Hillsdale doesn’t support that view. We believe that education has value in itself. We do not subscribe to some wonky utilitarian idea that education is good only if it gets you a job that pays six figures and keeps you in Cubans.
Limbaugh doesn’t understand the Hillsdale we know and love, and he’s missed the foundation of the liberal education. The college survived for decades without Limbaugh promoting it. We would be better off without his help.
