I spent some time Monday listening to my favorite comedy program, The Rush Limbaugh Show. Rush was at his sputtering best trying to turn the Colin Powell endorsement of Barack Obama into a bad thing.
His ham-handed hatchet job was something Powell could have deflected with his pinkie, had he been in the studio, but safely ensconced behind the golden microphone of the fictitious EIB network, Rush confidently slashed away.
"Let me say it louder, and let me say it even more plainly: It was totally about race!"
The not so hidden message being that as a man of color, Powell would be incapable of using any other criteria in decision making. I just smiled and shook my head.
Rush then attempted to discredit General Powell’s veracity, denying there was any truth to NBC’s Washington Bureau chief Mark Whittaker’s statement that Powell had told NBC he wasn't going to endorse until he had more time to study both candidates and to study their positions.
"I can understand if somebody who's from Mars just arrives here and needs to do that, but what is this notion, "He had to study the candidates, study issues and their positions..."
He caught himself just before labelling Powell a liar. By this time, I was grinning from ear to ear.
Having firmly established in his own mind that Gen. Powell was a racist and untruthful, his next step was to brand him as an egotistic Washington insider.
"The reason Powell made the decision is that it's about Powell." The precise reason that Powell gave this endorsement later in October means it's more likely about race: maximum impact for Obama, maximum damage to McCain, but more importantly, the most maximum benefit goes to Colin Powell, with his inside-the-Beltway buddies."
I almost spit my coffee out at the thought of such a humble man of dignity and honor contemplating such a self-serving act.
Then, in a logic leap only Limbaugh’s opiate-softened brain could make, he tried to tie Powell to the financial crisis.
"But Powell made the decision because it was about Powell. Andrea Mitchell and her husband, the former Fed chairman and Powell. I have no doubt that they are social friends."
WTF? How does General Powell having dinner with the ex-Chairman of the Fed and his wife (if indeed that ever happened) have anything to do with his endorsement of Obama or its timing?
His next line of attack was to make Powell an elitist.
"Colin Powell is a very wealthy man. He commands over $100,000 a speech. He makes more in three speeches than all those small businesses Obama says he wants to tax." "Why do you want the endorsement of millionaires like Powell and billionaires like Buffett?"
When they could have the endorsement of millionaires like Rush Limbaugh? ROTFLOL!
Then it was on to outright lies about both Powell and Obama.
"Obama is a socialist. He is a man with alliances with racists, terrorists, and felons. Powell has found out and admitted that Obama is inexperienced, has poor judgment, talks in the language of a Marxist..."
True to form, whenever Limbaugh runs out of his own brand of facts he starts making stuff up.
And his summation, his absolute "proof" that Powell’s endorsement was based on race and nothing else, was that it came only after Joe the Plumber allegedly exposed Obama as a socialist, after he was "caught" palling around with terrorist Bill Ayers, and after his ex-pastor, Rev. Wright, decided to use his pulpit as a political platform.
"It's totally about race, 100%, and you people in the Drive-Bys know it, but don't play us for fools."
We don’t have to play you and your ditto-heads for fools, Rush. You demonstrate your idiocy to us daily. Thanks for a good laugh. I needed it.