OK, what is the circus sideshow with the Obama Administration mentioning Rush Limbaugh in every 64th breath?
So he's a celebrity, larger than life, and larger than most pants. Do we really need to run him up the national flag pole ... to feed him so full of himself that he grows, possibly, to twice his unnatural size after digestion? (Until Myth Busters tests this, don't be sure it can't happen).
Sure, I get the stunt: Tell those poor, beleaguered Republicans, who recently found out that even the fairytale marriage of Bristol & Levi is a GOP feel-good delusion, that the pill-popping, button-popping poster boy for everything that's gone foul in the grand old party has stolen the show. That he is the show.
One of two things can happen after that.
- You successfully brand the Republican Party with a fellow that only a small, mouthy percentage of the base thinks isn't a buffoon. Your starry-eyed, Volvo-driving disciples high-five one another, smug in Bush-era self deception over the effectiveness of the maneuver. (But America, it turns out, is too smart to believe this hyperbole ... just as it was too smart to believe all that GOP hoo-hah during the election. History judges the whole exercise a frat boy prank).
or:
- You egg-on the head of the Republican National Committee, whoever that is, and he dances to your maliciously manipulative tune more enthusiastically than ever in your wildest dreams. He says, "Limbaugh? Not that clown. It's just a radio show. He's just an entertainer" and then a day later, "So sorry Mr. Clown. What I said wasn't what I was thinking." (The world laughs. Whoa ... the dude walks right into it! History still judges the whole exercise a frat boy prank).
Your Unhumble Car Czar, being a still-unauthorized cabinet pick for President O's American Makeover Machine, kind of feels like the kid in the back seat on a joyride that no one invited him on protesting, "Gee, fellas. I don't think this is such is such a hot idea."
We've got two wars and a recession nobody wants to call a depression tailing us. Should we really be knocking over this mailbox?
But no skin off my teeth. President O. dearly wants an Administration of diverse opinions and checks and balances: a united front of dissention, if you will. Even self-appointed cabinet members are invited to the party, I'm almost positive.
Here's my contribution to the Office Dissention Fund: I don't think this is such a great idea, this elevating America's Great Angry White Male Loser Enabler to the figurehead opposition to President O. and his Change locomotive. It's going to be viewed as sophomoric, silly, and frivolous down the road.
*** DISSENTION ENDS ***
So anyway, that whole Disagree with the Boss exercise was a blast.
It's a neat perk, but being a self-appointed cabinet member it seems to me you still have to be generally aligned with the head guy to the point of being a feckless yes-man at-heart, so it's time for me to get back on the Change Train and explain why anointing Rush Limbaugh the leader of the Republican Party is such a brilliant idea. Call it spin if you want. I call it job security. (Even with a made-up job, you can't be too sure about anything nowadays).
Let's lay the foundation for the Brilliant Idea argument by answering two important questions :
- Who is Rush Limbaugh?
He's the number one syndicated talk show host on the planet. (Howard Stern is no longer on this planet, and may never have been, come to think of it).
- Why is Rush important?
Well, first off, he's got one of those cool first names that the upper crust gives its kids to make them feel significant right off the bat ... just like that "Major" guy on FOX News who isn't and never was a "Major" in any military establishment, but who is understood to be a highly-decorated officer from The War on Terror by fully 33-percent of that network's in-and-out-of-really-focusing-on-what-they're-saying-on-the-TV-but-now-they're-saying-Obama's-ACORN-Group-caused-this-whole-stock-market-crash-and-look-Britany-is-skinny-again audience.
How might history have been writ had Rush been named "Dawdle" and Major named "Minor?"
Second, Rush Limbaugh is practically the only human being you can tune in on A.M. radio today. All those fun stations from the 70s – you know ... the radio stations that gave away Shawn Cassidy singles to the 10th caller and hosted Friday Giggly Teenage Girl Call-in Nights are long gone, swallowed-without-chewing by the cigar-sucking, Oxycontin gulping pork hole of the King of Talk Radio. Check-out the YouTube video of Mr. Limbaugh's last colonoscopy, once it's posted. Someone screeching, "We've got Katie from Crestline partying with her friends on the line. Hey Katie, what's up?" can clearly be heard trapped somewhere in Mr. Limbaugh's large intestine.
Rush is so important that there are even Rush protégés to fill-in the dead zones of this now otherwise barren radio band, like the guy whose call-in fans greet him with "You're a Great American" (since the audio avenue precludes the visual of a snappy New Order hand salute) and the guy with the severely deviated septum whom you have to spend an hour listening to before you're convinced he's not some DJ's prank caricature of someone's grown special-needs son broadcasting on a crystal radio transmitter from a dank, lead-paint-painted basement in Queens. (In which case you should have remembered, silly, that all the DJs have been swallowed. They're in Rush Limbaugh's tummy now).
Don't underestimate the importance of the medium here in estimating Mr. Limbaugh's importance, either. Amplified Modulation radio waves are earthbound by day, reaching only a few hundred miles via the most powerful transmitters. But by night, reflective changes in the earth's ionosphere allow A.M. radio waves to travel freely to places that don't get cable or even good analog TV reception, and whose metropolitan newspaper is more likely to cover which neighbor's deceased cat was found under which neighbor's porch than a G7 conference.
In other words, populations who potentially get the least news during the day now have the opportunity to flip a switch and be bathed in news of the world courtesy of Rush Limbaugh's well-funded, on-message professional race- and class-baiting booster signals in the drunkest, most sleep-deprived, most paranoid darkest hours of the day.
***IMPORTANCE OF RUSH LIMBAUGH ENDS***
I know. The last two paragraphs up there are pure liberal flyover state snootiness. But I like indulging in stuff like that as much as Mr. Limbaugh enjoys a good farmer's breakfast before breakfast.
So here's the theory underpinning the brilliance of the Big O's public attack on the Fat L.
I'm calling the concept "The Audacity of Hope," because I think it's catchy:
President O. & Co. have, in their recreational off-hour breaks from cleaning up the biggest mess the United States of America has seen since the botched ending of The Sopranos, come to terms with the fact that a significant portion of this great country loves Hate Radio, and that the resulting endemic mass reciprocal perpetually regenerative ignorance is holding our nation back.
Being the radical centrists they are, O. & Co. wouldn't dream of doing anything underhanded to silence Fatty L. and his dittofolk.
Instead, they're stalking the ringleader on his home ground – the airwaves. They're shining a bright light on him in a venue that's visible to all (eschewing available dirty high-office proceedings like IRS audits or guys in black suits) and fattening him up for market day.
The back-story message goes like this:
Dear GOP: We can't help but notice that after you've trotted out three disastrously incompetent diversity candidates in a row as the new faces of the Republican party in just the past six months that you guys are just plain out of ammo. (We admit to having a similar incident with Howard Dean, but that was then and this is now).
You've lost your audience because you've lost your message.
One guy who hasn't lost either is Rush Limbaugh, who continues to make America's disenfranchised ticked-off white underclass feel good about themselves and their failings. (Crack hos are stealing your livelihood thanks to liberal enablers: queue The Pretenders).
The above malcontents identify most closely with you guys. They're the only right-wingers talking as the rest of you remain in shock over the shambles left by The Decider.
So you had your chance. Now Rush Limbaugh is the heart, soul, and spirit of your party.
We dare you to disagree or agree.
As enlightened instruments of change, we know we can't be in charge forever. America is about choices, and without a strong opposition party our own party will without doubt soon be infected with the conceit adopted by the GOP during the self-serving, insulated Bush years – an unhealthy circumstance for The United States of America regardless of which party you support.
We came to play.
We want competition.
There will be no byes.
Sincerely,
The New Messiah et al.
(I hear President O. similarly chastises sucky teams during his pick-up basketball games. Charles Barkley once dissed him on the court as being an "over-thinker").
So here's the ingenious, audacious hope ... an end game that is nothing short of a transformational, cataclysmic, seismic macroeconomic revolution that is even as we speak being exercised by one man with a microphone-to-the-world who doesn't otherwise exercise.
Rush Limbaugh has just received the largest federal credibility bailout in history, courtesy of the Big O. & Co.
This radio god is no longer stuck motor-mouthing in the shadows of Carolina paper mills, Appalachian foothills, and pickup truck cabs of under-employed white males who are certain that Affirmative Action squashed their careers. Mr. Limbaugh's big show has now gone to The Big Show. His listenership is up and his advertising rates are through the roof – all because Republicans, for the most part, don't really "get" sarcasm except in cases where they're calling President O. "The New Messiah" or "Obambi."
In case you haven't noticed Rush out on the town hob-knobbing with Marvin Shanken, the guy who publishes lifestyle magazines featuring himself photographed with celebrities, Mr. Limbaugh enjoys the finer things in life: cigars, yachts, babes, and doing any and every damned thing that the world's pale, retentive, liberal weenies despise. Before he ate it, Mr. Limbaugh actually daily-drove the first flavored vehicle capable of towing 10,000 pounds, a bacon & cheddar Suburban.
So this country's ad-rate-hiked, more robustly-capitalized Rush Limbaugh is going to go out there and buy more stuff.
Are you seeing the brilliance yet?
More cars. More boats. More hundred-dollar cigars.
Ka-ching. Ka-ching. Ka-ching.
The stuff of stimulus dreams.
But most importantly, the newly more-famous, more-rich Rush Limbaugh is without doubt going to buy more sausage and more bacon.
Tons of it.
Hectares.
More hogs than T. Boone Pickens has wind-farming leases.
Mr. Limbaugh will not be able to eat all of the sausage and bacon himself, but he'll buy it, I'm pretty sure, because he enjoys it and because he can.
Projections I've recently made up for The Office of Management and Budget suggest that this new injection of advertising-rate-hike capital into Rush Limbaugh will serve to quickly unfreeze the pork markets, which will lead to an uptick in hog futures. Durable goods, manufacturing, and new home sales will follow like a reverse house of cards actually building itself from a pile of strewn Jacks and Queens, and America will rise to greatness once again.
Is anybody excited now?
But what about Mr. Limbaugh's daily railing against pork on his radio program, even as he inhales plates of it off-mike while those hair growth pill ads air? Does that mean he's actually against pork?
Pure bluster.
He's also railed against drug abusers and people who twist the truth.
It's just a radio show, for goodness sake, and Rush Limbaugh is just an entertainer.
Sit back and enjoy the ride, everybody.
It turns out the Big O. knows, as Rush grows, so grows the country, and Rush Limbaugh is too big to fail.
###
I'm not done yet. Next week: Late Mergers on the Freeway.
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