Slumdogs and Rush

01125112par89380imagefile Apparently, Rush Limbaugh is in hot water again, this time from the Indian American community. On his radio show last week, Rush had the following conversation with a caller:

CALLER: Perseverance. America, you have to persevere, you have to be patient. Just because your web page doesn’t load as fast as you want it, the economy isn’t going to be as fast as the web page. What really irks me is with corporate America, people saying, “Rush, can I get my job back? Are you going to be able to get my job back from something that’s been outsourced and the corporations are going all over, out of the country.” Why don’t these people invest in America, invest in corporate America, become stockholders. The CEOs and the boards of directors pay lip service to their shareholders. Invest in America and invest in yourself by investing in corporate America. Wouldn’t that help?

RUSH: It might. No question about it. But the whole thing about outsourcing, even President Obama slipped up. I love this, ’cause the teleprompter, that teleprompter sometimes sneaks things in there that are not in Obama’s best interests to say, but the teleprompter nevertheless makes him say them. Obama got a call during his virtual town meeting about outsourcing jobs, he said, “Look, those jobs aren’t coming back.” There’s a reason they aren’t coming back. They’re outsourced for a reason, an economic reason, and they’re not coming back. If you’re sitting out waiting for a job that’s now being done by a slumdog in India, and you’re waiting for that job to be canceled, for the slumdog to be thrown out of work, and you to get the job, it ain’t going to happen. It’s not the way economics works. Even Obama’s teleprompter got him to admit that. Now, as for slow loading web pages, I haven’t had that problem in I don’t know how long. I use Safari Beta 4 with a T3. I mean it’s just there. If your web page is loading slow, and it bothers you that much, go get a T3, or band a bunch of cable modems together or what have you. There’s no reason to sit up there and tolerate a slow-loading web page.

Now, I can understand Indians being insulted by the term ‘Slumdog’, especially since ‘dog’ is a pretty derogatory term in India.

What I can’t understand is the hypocrisy.

If ‘Slumdog’ is an insult, where were the protests when Slumdog Millionaire was in theaters, and winning the Academy Awards? That was a much more widespread use of the term than will ever hear it from Rush Limbaugh’s mouth. I know there were protesters in Mumbai and other places, but I heard of none here in the United States. Danny Boyle, director of Slumdog Millionaire, himself got the term ‘slumdog’ from ‘underdog’, not realizing that ‘dog’ was a derogatory term.

I think Limbaugh has got his facts wrong, first of all. Many of the jobs that have been outsourced to India are relatively high talent jobs, and most of these individuals are more educated than their counterparts in the U.S.. To call them Slumdogs is factually incorrect.

However, Rush is totally right that these jobs are not coming back to the United States. They are relatively low skilled jobs, overall, and can be done much cheaper overseas. Second, and maybe more importantly for Indians, Limbaugh is actually defending the practice of outsourcing. Unlike Obama and many of his allies, that want to make outsourcing more difficult, Limbaugh feels that t he market and not local politics should determine where jobs go. The irony is, that Rush is defending the economic prosperity of those that have outsourced jobs in India. And remember: this is the same man who called for John McCain to pick Bobby Jindal as his Vice Presidential candidate, and thinks Jindal is the future of the Republican Party. Not quite the actions of a racist.

Now, if you are offended by the term ‘Slumdog’, that I can understand. But I frankly cannot accept hypocrisy. If you think it is an insult, then you should boycotted the movie, and even better, protested against it. Millions of Indians were dancing in the streets a month ago when the movie won ‘Best Picture’. Should they not have been protesting the harsh insult and racism of giving the award to a movie with a derogatory title?

Or is it an insult because Rush is pointing to the middle class in this comment, instead of the plethora of India’s poor? There is hypocrisy there as well; if it is an insult to the middle class, it should be an insult to the poor as well. But those that loved the movie didn’t make that distinction, did they? I guess it is o.k. to call India’s 600 million poor ‘slumdogs’; just don’t call the elite of India that.

But many of the people now complaining about the use of the word loved the movie and held it up as an example of India entering the modern era. Liberal Indian lobby groups have jumped on the bandwagon to raise money; but where were they to boycott the movie then? They were nowhere to be found. Where were they when Chris Matthews of MSNBC accused Republicans of ‘outsourcing’ their rebuttal to the State of the Union, because it was given by Indian American Bobby Jindal?

In a world where there are a lot of really dangerous racists around, making a big deal about stupid comments like this is a waste of time. Iranians today called Elie Wiesel a ‘Zionazi’. This, to a man who dealt with the Holocaust head on. A man who won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize fighting against racism and oppression. Yet, I see no email protests, online petitions, or uproar over that.

Stand up for your principles, but be clear in what you believe. If you think ‘slumdog’ is racist, stand up for your belief, both with Rush and the movie. But be honest to yourself. You can’t have it both ways.