Two Chinese-American members of Congress have demanded that El Rushbo apologize for mocking Chinese President Hu Jintao on his show 1/19 over a speech he made at the White House. Said Limbaugh: “Hu Jintao — He was speaking and they weren’t translating. They normally translate every couple of words. Hu Jintao was just going ching chong, ching chong cha.”
He then did about 15 seconds more of an imitation of the Chinese leader as he was watching it on Fox News.
See MSNBC’s coverage here:
Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., the first Chinese-American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, said she was “shocked and appalled” by Limbaugh’s comments.
Oregon Rep. David Wu called Limbaugh’s statement an example of his “fundamental lack of character.”
Limbaugh’s attempt at humor has since circulated all over China on numerous news and websites.
RBR-TVBR observation: Yes, you could call this an international incident. Things are a bit tense right now in US-Chinese relations and the purpose of the visit was to help smooth things out. We assume Rush will apologize and it will all go away. If not, we can assume nationalists in China will be harping on this for a while. If the top radio talker in the US has this disrespect for the Chinese leader, does it represent the majority of Americans? Either way, we doubt this will lose any advertisers for his show, like so many other Talkers’ gaffes tend to do!
