Sarah Jaffe: Rush Limbaugh Thinks the Unemployed Need to Suffer!

When official unemployment's been over 8 percent for over three years, it can be hard to keep focused on the crisis. The endless repetition of jobs statistics can become numbing. But the people struggling every day with the realities of joblessness don't need the reminder: They're living the crisis, day in and day out. So imagine how they felt when Rush Limbaugh, self-proclaimed patron saint of the everyday Joe who's being kept down by the Man, never mind that in his casethe Man is represented by liberals, who might want you know, create jobs or raise the minimum wage declared this week: "The sad truth is that employment is not pivotal. No job, no employment, no pain. For a whole heck of a lot of people whose expectations for themselves are not very high. There are no jobs, and yet they're still eating. I'm telling you, there's a new reality out there, because it's not resulting in that much pain, not nearly as much as it used to be. The so-called victims of the unemployment circumstance are not suffering as unemployed people in the past did." We are supposed to be cheered, I suppose, that Limbaugh says,"Not that I want them to!" Because, of course, Rush wouldn't actually be wishing suffering on those people, whose expectations for themselves are not very high. Where did all this come from? Limbaugh's warning Mitt Romney that he won't be able to win the election on jobs by continuing to point out the high unemployment rate, and not because Romney's personal record is one of slashing and burning jobs, wherever he went. No, Limbaugh thinks that unemployment is still high because those unemployed folks are being coddled with food stamps and unemployment checks.