Mr. Irrelevant?

No, I am not talking about the 256th player to be chosen in the NFL draft later this month. I am referring to Rush Limbaugh.

A co-worker of mine whose intelligence I have a great deal of respect for recently informed me that she adores Rush Limbaugh. Now, I have a great fondness for Rush as well. Whenever I need some ridiculously off-the-wall nonsense, I look to Rush for my amusement. I laugh, but then again I have always enjoyed perverse, gallows humor. I admire Rush, like any other good comedian, for keeping a straight face. But sadly, my esteemed co-worker likes Rush for an entirely different reason- she actually agrees with him.

That got me thinking. When much was made about Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and others begging Rush for forgiveness after slighting the conservative talk show host, I was elated. I mean, if Rush is the de-facto leader of the Republican Party, they will continue to suffer losses at the ballot box. I mean, nobody could possibly take Rush seriously, right?

Apparently I was wrong. There is still a segment of society out there that accept Rush at his word, even though he never provides factual information to support his ridiculous rantings. According to my co-worker, during his recent speech at CPAC, Rush said that liberal policies are 'cruel' to the very people for whom liberals profess to have compassion. Now, he evidently doesn't describe which specific liberal policies are 'cruel', but that just saves him the trouble of having to create an intelligent argument to support his position.

Another canard my co-worker swallows is Rush's 'income redistribution' rant. Now, one may expect that when one casually throws this emotional sound bite around as if he were talking about his favorite Chinese Buffet restaurant, some verifiable bits of information might be included. But this is a Rush rant, and Rush rants are oil to truth's water. Don't take my word for it. It is no accident that when one Googles 'Rush Limbaugh lies', over 1.1 million hits are retrieved. So Rush is calling Obama a commie for wanting to return to Reagan-era tax policy. This, at at time when the income distribution gap has widened to 1928 levels, which Alan Greenspan (who has never been accused of being a socialist) referred to as a 'very disturbing trend'. You can't get more disingenuous than that. Admittedly, the most confounding thing to me is that I suspect my co-worker earns somewhat less than the $500,000 that is commonly used by Rush as being victimized by Obama's tax policy. I can accept dogs walking on their front paws, men wrestling crocodiles, and Cub fans, but I'll never understand why anyone would support those whose policies are in direct conflict with his or her own best interest.

To my co-worker and others who accept Rush's rantings blindly: try removing the sound bites, talking points, old , long-since-been-disproven cliches, and unverifiable 'facts' that Rush 'didn't make up', then listen to what he has to say. I submit that what is left will be the equivalent of the sound of one hand clapping- one irrelevant tree falling in a forest devoid of humanity.