A dick and a dike.

Rush Limbaugh is a certified genius. There is nobody better at rankling the feathers of anyone who is not a dittohead than the great Satan of conservative talk radio. Ann Coulter is so transparently a joke these days that liberals find her more amusing than irritating. And her willingness to playfully joust with Bill Maher is almost explicit code for "I'm in it for the money." But Limbaugh? Limbaugh infuses just enough intelligence, just enough fact, and just enough humor to be the Molotov cocktail that makes myself and other liberals burn with the hate of a thousand suns. That's skill. And, with apologies to Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, nobody does it better.

That said, the more influential Limbaugh is within the Republican party, and the more his big, fat, bloated face represents what the GOP is all about, the better it is for everyone else. The Obama folks know what they're doing when they try to declare Limbaugh the de facto leader of his party. Limbaugh is an exaggerated symbol of all that's wrong with the Republicans. More stunning is that whenever an actual GOP leader pushes back against Limbaugh, as Michael Steele, Newt Gingrich and a few others have weakly attempted, they almost immediately withdraw with a sort of deferential recognition of the sway Limbaugh holds. It's hilarious, really.

All of this is just my way of introducing the latest idiocy to spew from Limbaugh's mouth. I just wanted to be clear that I actually like when Limbaugh is being Limbaugh. If Rush should ever move to the left, even a little bit...if he should ever strike a conciliatory tone instead of his defiant one...if he should ever start making sense instead of nonsense...then he would become the left's biggest enemy. Instead he's a joke who is helping to divide his party along very divisive lines. If you read my post about Obama and the Catholic Church, I think it'd be fair to say that Limbaugh is the crazy Pope...powerful amongst the irrational types, but a drug-addled punchline to the ones that count.

So, what words of wisdom hath he spoke this time?

From this weekend:

"I heard some top of the hour news and it made me feel uncomfortable. It's about the flooding in Fargo, North Dakota brought on by the melting snowpack and the icepack. (reading from news item) "As the Red River threatens to overflow, they're filling in the dikes." Isn't there a more appropriate word? Do we have to say, I mean, we don't have any dikes here. The 'dykes' are over there...They're filling in the dikes. Couldn't we change that to 'they're filling in the contingencies' or something?...We really need to change that word."



God, I love Rush. He's only slightly less helpful to Democrats than Sarah Palin.