The Cover of the July 21st New Yorker, and Invoking Rush Limbaugh

As a longtime New Yorker subscriber, I'm used to the occasional cover which some readers consider to be in bad taste. This one is so slapstick, it looks like it belongs in Mad Magazine. As for being offensive, I'm sure Cheney supporters were more offended to see him depicted as the Halloween pumpkin. The people in this country have different grasps on reality, but surely they can all take, if not appreciate, a joke.

Gary Kamiya has a great column on this in salon.com . The only problem I have is with the title and his invoking of Rush Limbaugh:

"Rush Limbaugh Was Right. The blogosphere's reaction to the New Yorker cover proves that the Bush era has killed a lot of liberals' sense of humor. And that's not funny."

Here are excerpts from the beginning of the column.

It's official: The Bush era has made liberals so terrified of right-wing smears it has caused them to completely lose their sense of humor.
Much as I hate to repeat one of Rush Limbaugh's flat, stale and unprofitable applause lines, that's the only conclusion I can draw after witnessing the left-wing blogosphere's bizarre reaction to the New Yorker cover [pictured above] depicting Barack Obama .... . To judge from the reaction of much of the left, you'd think that New Yorker editor David Remnick had morphed into some kind of hideous hybrid of Roger Ailes and Roland Barthes and was waging an insidious Semiotic War against Obama.

Here is my reaction..

Rush Limbaugh Is Not Right

I thought Gary Kamiya's article was great, except for the inappropriate title. Rush Limbaugh hates liberals. He denigrates them on a daily basis. He doesn't think they were ever capable of having a sense of humor, so how could they lose one? And when he attacks liberals, it is not meant as a joke.

Limbaugh dissembles about his past statements on a regular basis. He constantly attacks the "drive-by media," but then quotes them when he agrees with something they say. He has a legion of followers who hang on his every word, oblivious to his reworking of the truth, his rewriting of history and his logical inconsistencies. True, he is clever and funny, but he can also be diabolical.

People on the left are always going after Fox News, but that organization is diverse, albeit slanted to the right. I am more worried about the legion of dittoheads Rush continues to nurture and amuse with his often hateful commentary. They constitute the Limbaugh cult, and I don't think their cult leader, "El Rushbo" as he likes to call himself, is entitled to be given any credibility as a serious and thoughtful commentator. The dittoheads may buy into all this, but why should anyone else?