Rush and Roulette

What is it that they say? "Dittoes"? Or is it "mega-dittoes"?

Whatever it might be, America owes AM deejay Rush Limbaugh and his lost and lonely listeners another round of gratuitous applause. Thank you, sir, for leading your conservative audience and the Republican Party to a crushing defeat - again.

It's quite remarkable, this man's ability to motivate so many people to stampede in the wrong direction, a gift he never tires of demonstrating. Remember the 2oo6 election run-up, in which he mocked Parkinson's patient Michael J. Fox? Sheer brilliance. It only helped remove the GOP from power in Congress.

That was nothing compared to "Operation Chaosss". For those who choose to remain out of the loop, that was Rush's attempt to bleed Barack Obama in the Democratic primary, with conservatives registering as Democrats in order to push Hillary Clinton over the top. It was an abject failure.

Now he has achieved what was once thought to be impossible. Health-care reform had languished in the halls of Washington for a century before the Obama administration and the Democratic Party "rammed it down our throats". Rush fought on behalf of the insurance companies day in and day out whenever he wasn't on vacation.

Hope had actually dimmed after the election of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, but there was Rush, pushing it over the top with his soulless remark to an 11-year-old boy: "Your mom would have died anyway." Barely a week later, the Senate bill was approved by the House; talent on loan from God, indeed.

Today, that landmark legislation will be signed into law, and the conservative movement's hysteria has been well-documented along the way. Reports of racial and sexual epithets being hurled at lawmakers, of protestors spitting on them, of a brick being thrown through an office window, all icing on the cake that Limbaugh baked halfway.

Look, he's just an entertainer, once described as a "circus clown" by John McCain. That roughly 2.9 percent of the country is entertained by this sort of thing tells you a little bit more about a society that slows down to gawk at traffic accidents. Still, I really have to ask his listeners, those pathological losers that call themselves "ditto-heads", a couple of quick questions:

Do you really consider yourselves in the mainstream anymore, considering the fact that you have followed this corporate shill into defeat after defeat? Considering that this man's views were (twice) deemed too conservative even for the National Football Leauge, do you believe that your world view - meaning Rush's world view - jibes at all with reality?

And, by the way, how would you know?

pH 3.23.1o