That didn't take long. Observing the "peasants with their pitchforks surrounding the corporate headquarters," Rush Limbaugh, predictably, sides with the Monster and its creator(s). Rush's indignation is delivered in a dudgeon so high that I expected that Michael Steele might rush out from the wings at any moment, with an apology at the ready.
Such episodes can be useful to us if only in allowing Rush to express (yet again) one of the many either/or paradigms that Republicans use to mentally organize the world: For Rush, you are either one of the peasants, or part of the deserving rich. As Walter Benjamin said in responding to Marinetti's "War is beautiful" rantings, "This manifesto has the virtue of clarity."
Never mind that, as fellow DK diarist Wamsutta reminds us, Mr. Limbaugh not so long ago claimed to be one of "the pleebs, the peasants, the great unwashed, the victims..."
Rush the victim. A response perhaps not so out of place at a time when his ilk is so threatened by Democratic success that their best idea is to wear funny hats and aprons. But still. Victim status? Isn't that supposed to be the Democratic shtick? If they're going to steal our ideas, they should steal the ones that are actually ours, not the ones they impute to us in their fevered imaginings.
Beyond this absurdity, will Rush's listeners see the contradiction of claiming a populist mantle while railing for the rich? (Some questions we ask just for the comedy relief.) Of course, the same immunity to reality that inoculates his listeners against his rabid tirades will no doubt have them oblivious to another sleight-of-hand moment in which their Oracle shows them the mechanical workings behind the curtain, and reveals (yet again) that, to him, faux populism is just another market to trade in. Rush exults, in his upholstered complacency, completely aware that it won't stop them from tuning in.