Rush-Thug, King-Pope of the Republicans?

I have been astounded for years at the shadow cast by Rush Limbaugh. In many ways, he's like your run-of-the-mill junior high school bully, using physical intimidation, well-honed verbal skills, and threats to overcome his own shortcomings of other sorts, e.g., social skills in general, inability to keep genitals covered and out of polite conversation, refraining from dragging knuckles on ground, etc., etc. But somehow this one has gained access to super-powers or something. And I gather he is actually pretty savvy.

Perhaps like some of you, I had some quite unpleasant ongoing and sometimes intense dealings with bullies and the like when I was a pup. But I don't get this. Why is someone with such obvious psychopathology (to put it mildly) and little if anything but hate to offer on such a media roll? We don't need to call the vice-Principal, we just need to re-invoke basic civility. And perhaps an extended time-out for this particular sad little specimen who obviously never got what he needed.

There are some resonances, including corporate media constantly looking for controversy and rancour, which is most of what rl does. And sadly, there is that hate. I guess for many disappointed in how their lives have played out, it is hard to resist a swine like rl who will help these self-designated victim-cultists find a scapegoat for their woeful lives.

The brief Tarantelle between the new RNC Chairman-dweeb and rl has been quite fascinating. I'm not sure we could have choreographed it better (I saw squib earlier commending Dem psy-ops for making this happen - as if!). Digby's coverage will stand in for several others:

Oh my goodness. This Rush thing is really causing some dissonance in the GOP. I've been watching them dance on the head of a pin all day trying not to offend him while not endorsing his comments. It's almost painful.

But he is, as some of us have been pointing for years, the true leader of the Republican Party. And we were told by all the serious people that he was a harmless, mainstream entertainer and that we should all just lighten up --- even as luminaries of the Republican party and the luminaries of the conservative movement bowed and scraped like abused streetwalkers at the feet of their violent pimp. They defended his comments about Abu Ghraib, fergawdsake. He can literally do no wrong.

Sure enough, like clockwork, the head of the RNC just went crawling on his belly and begged for forgiveness for suggesting otherwise:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

The dust-up comes at a time when top Democrats are trying to make Limbaugh the face of the Republican Party, in part by using ads funded by labor. Americans United for Change sent a fund-raising e-mail Monday that begins: “The Republican Party has turned into the Rush Limbaugh Party.”

Steele told CNN host D.L. Hughley in an interview aired Saturday night: “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh — his whole thing is entertainment. He has this incendiary — yes, it's ugly.”

Steele, who won a hard-fought chairman's race on Jan. 30, told Politico he telephoned Limbaugh after his show on Monday afternoon and hoped that they would connect soon.

“I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking,” Steele said. "It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people … want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not."

That's just sad.

No, it goes beyond sad; more bluntly, that is truly a shameful embarrassment for you, Mr. Steele-castrato. Hope you enjoy singing soprano with the choir.

You are the definition of pathetic.

Good luck with your new leadership role.