There Is No God But Rush Limbaugh...

Everybody’s been trying to drag me into this goddamned Radio Talk Show Host debate. In trying to dodge it, I’ve even gone so far as to publish somebody else’s rant on the subject without their permission. I don’t even want to mention the provocateur by name, but I am assured by all the smart people I know that my site will get more ‘hits’ if I do (more on that later), so here it is: Rush Limbaugh.

(Point of order: On a challenge from my pal The Last Boy Scout, I’m going to try to get through this without taking any easy shots as relate to Mr. Limbaugh’s unseemly girth, although I hold that his record as a drug abuser – at the same time as he was calling for harsher treatment of drug offenders on his show – remains fair game. Hypocrisy is always fair game.)

Even The Missus sent me a link to a blog on the Big Hot Topic yesterday: Is or is not Rush Limbaugh the de-facto head of the Republican party?

See? I just typed the sentence once and I’m drowsing off already.

But I’ve been advised to try to weaponize my blog, ie: Find ways to derive revenue from it against the day my newspaper career ceases to exist altogether. And right now, I am assured that including Rush Limbaugh’s name will drive people to this site (hello, welcome!), and that’s the name of the game. Plus, I can derive some perverse pleasure knowing that I am attempting to use Rush Limbaugh to improve my ratings the same way Rush Limbaugh is using this trumped-up controversy to increase his. So I am going to cite him by name, Rush Limbaugh, as many times as I can.

Rush Limbaugh.

Anyhow, I browsed the BlogHer link The Missus sent me (above) and didn’t see anything but well-written variations on the same hew and cry I’ve been silently suffering for it seems like weeks now. So I wrote her back:

Oh God no, it’s all just the same back-and-forth I’ve been having with [The Last Boy Scout]. I don’t want to contribute to the public din over this issue or this man.

It’s all hocus-pocus. In English-Major terms, it’s all text, where what’s interesting is the subtext. Not the conversation itself, but what the very existence of this conversation means. In this case, it’s all razzle-dazzle designed to A) boost Rush’s ratings, B) boost Rush’s ratings, and C) give the GOP a chance to re-group and find an actual leader who isn’t going to help drive independents to the polls to vote for a Democrat again in ‘12.

Rush is a convenient distraction right now, but it won’t be long before he’s a huge drain on the GOP ticket. So I guess in that sense I should help stoke the fire, but I don’t think my help is needed at this point.

So it cannot be argued that I did not try to sit this one out, but in the end, I have decided to play after all. But just this once, then Rush Limbaugh’s name will be banished once more, hopefully never again to appear in my little corner of the Fangosphere.

(Since the running email conversation on this topic with TLBS has been ongoing for weeks now, I’m going to copy-and-paste some of that to save the tips of my overworked index fingers any more punishment than they actually need to suffer.)

As I was saying, TLBS sent me some ridiculous thing the other day about Limbaugh apparently challenging Barack Obama, President of the United States and arguably the busiest guy in the world, to a debate on his show, then called Obama out when said offer was either ignored or declined, I’m not sure which. I’m guessing ignored.

Sidebar: I love TLBS, I really do. More than that, I admire him. We started out together as near-peers and in the time it has taken me to sink to the bottom of my chosen dying industry, he has climbed to absolutely dizzying heights in his own. And he’s gotten there by being smarter and better at what he does than any of his competition. He’s a bright fucking guy. So you can imagine my frustration with his infatuation with Rush Limbaugh. I ‘get’ every other part of his conservatism, but his slavish devotion to this pompous radio blowhard is a complete mystery to me. I mean, I can’t even defend Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann because they’re such obvious self-serving, self-parodying blowhards. Yet compared to Rush Limbaugh, they’re the stereotypical fusty librarian whispering “Hush.”

Like I said, it’s a mystery to me.

Anyhow, after he sent me a bullet-pointed list arguing for said Obama/Limbaugh sit-down, I responded in spite of my distaste for the issue:

First, if you were on my side of the aisle, you’d appreciate the laughable absurdity of even the notion that a sitting President of the United States would throw his credibility away by pulling up a chair for a palaver with a carny hustler the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

By saying that Rush Limbaugh is the de-facto leader of the GOP, the left-wing is not elevating Rush Limbaugh, they’re damning by comparison the feckless, squabbling elected officials who ought to be carrying your banner. (And it is a damning indictment indeed.)

And the reason Rush still matters is because you guys have no bench whatsoever. If your side had its own Barack Obama, Rush Limbaugh would be bounced right back to the lunatic fringe margins where he belongs.

The fact that everybody seems to agree the he matters is music to my ears because it tells me the GOP is pulling hard to the right, meaning they’ve given up on the centrists and independents in your party who crossed over and helped get Obama elected last time. And Rush Limbaugh’s snake oil is no kind of enticement to win those voters back.

So long live Rush Limbaugh. May his tenure as moral center and intellectual bulwark of the Republican party last just as long as humanly possible.

That’s pretty much how I feel about it. If Rush Limbaugh isn’t the epicenter of the Republican party, they’re doing a pretty shitty job of getting that message out. Probably because Rush (and Fox News, reliably in Rush’s corner throughout this whole episode) is the guy they’ve long-since tasked with delivering their message.

Oh the comedy is just too rich.

And as long as I’m ‘going there,’ I just have to say how much I’ve enjoyed the spectacle of the GOP responding to Hillary’s up-for-grabs voters last year by puking forth Sarah Palin, then reacting to Obama’s election with their own colored fella, Michael Steele. (If America had elected a cross-dresser as President, Rudy Giuliani would probably be head of the RNC today.) This guy, Steele, makes me feel embarrassed every time he opens his mouth, and I’m neither black nor Republican. JC Watts, you got out too soon.

To sum up, Rumsfeld-style… Am I bored bored bored with this whole distraction? You betcha. Am I am a Bad Person for enjoying the Republicans engaging in the kind of circular firing squad that is usually reserved for the Democrats? No. I was a bad person long before that. Do I want this meaningless Rush Limbaugh-centric and –fueled ‘debate’ to keep going round and round ad infinitum, at least until Obama quietly pushes through the rest of his radical recovery agenda while everyone’s attention is distracted by all this narcissistic ephemera? Oh hell yes.

The Republican party is on a sinking boat and they can’t even decide who’s in charge of re-arranging the deck chairs. What’s not to love?

Best of all, the ratings are through the roof!