Rush Limbaugh: Too fat to fail

So why hasn't Rush Limbaugh been fired?
Why hasn't calling a Georgetown University researcher (one of those "women with brains" the hard right has been hearing about lately) a "slut" and suggesting women who want contraception covered by their health care plan be required to make sex tapes everyone can watch been enough to kick Limbaugh off the air?
After all, Don Imus was fired a few years back for making derogatory remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team.
When Keith Olberman became too much for anyone to handle, MSNBC gave him the ax.
So why has Limbaugh been allowed to continue, not even suffering so much as a suspension for making remarks from the lean of politics that supposedly takes the moral high-ground, family values approach in this country?
Because he reaches 50 million listeners/viewers a day.
Like our auto industry, Limbaugh is too big, or in his case, too fat, to fail.
As sponsor after sponsor has pulled their advertising dollars from Limbaugh's show, he has arrogantly announced that he will simply find others. And he's probably right.
Limbaugh is almost bullet proof. From his bout with prescription addiction, to his failed marriages, he has still been able to speak from the high pulpit of hypocrisy daily without skipping a beat.
So, let's put all of the political junk aside for a second, and simply ask the question, why is he so popular?
Well, I for one, even enjoyed listening to Limbaugh once upon a time.
I was in middle school, and my dad and I were taking a lot of road trips together at the time.
Dad always likes listening to talk radio on long drives.
When I was a young kid strapped into the back of a brown Volvo sedan, it was NPR.
By the time I had moved up to the front seat of a sportier vehicle, it was Limbaugh.
Limbaugh really appealed to me. He was funny. He had everything figured out. He was hateful.
Do you know why that appealed to me? Because I was in the seventh-grade.
That is Limbaugh's target mentality. He makes things easy to laugh about. Easy to hate. He puts it all in a neat package that avoids the unnecessary complexities of the real world.
And in a country that's been dumbed down to the level of a coma victim, it's easy pickings.
Have you ever had a conversation with a Limbaugh fan in which you try to put forth an opposing view? It's not much of a conversation. The few times I've done it, the other person just yelled at me and called me names.
Sound like a middle-schooler to you?
By the way, the last time I called a girl a "slut" it was in middle school and I got called into the principal's office. Repercussions for my actions? What the hell? If only I had 50 million classmates who would vouch for me.
So let's bring the political stuff back in here and demonstrate how this works.
Welfare: Every Welfare recipient is too lazy to work and would rather sit at home, have more kids for more Welfare money, and reap the benefits that we taxpayers provide. See? It's easy.
Unemployment: People, especially the Welfare people, need to get off of their duffs, pull themselves up by their boot straps and get a job. Any job. If they don't like the job or their wages, they should simply apply more effort and change careers. Solved.
The Middle East: This gets into the area of George Orwell's "doublethink." If a Republican is our Commander in Chief, we should go in and bomb the crap out of people. If it's a Democrat, we should just let those people destroy themselves. Next.
Women's rights: Women (or "feminazis" as Limbaugh calls them, and you know how cute and funny it is when an entire group of people are compared to the Third Reich) have rights? When did that happen? Oh well, the ones that do are sluts who should be making sex tapes for our amusement.
Laughable right? But if you can boil down incredibly complex issues to one phrase, people will lap it up. And they will repeat it.
Limbaugh's theme song might as well be "Popular" from "Wicked."
Now, after reading all of this, here is something that I want you to consider. I am not a straight-ticket Democrat. Ssssshhh, save your screaming for later.
I voted for Bob Dole in the first presidential election I was eligible for. I voted for George W. the next time. I didn't like how W. marched us into Iraq, so I voted for John Kerry in 2004. In 2008, I voted for Obama. I probably will again, mainly because we were both born in Hawaii and are constantly having to prove our citizenship. Oh, wait, I'm white, so that's never happened to me.
Basically, even though I have a more liberal mind-set, I vote for whoever I think is the right person for the job.
And that person has never had a one-line answer to a complex political, social or economic problem.
Which brings us back to Limbaugh. It's ironic that the only network that ever had the backbone to fire him was ESPN.
You remember, when they brought Limbaugh in as a side analyst who could throw a "challenge flag" to points made on ESPN's NFL preview shows?
Do you remember when Limbaugh suggested that Donovan McNabb was receiving more media attention than he should, because he was black, and the media had an agenda to put forth a successful black quarterback?
His motivations and logic were questionable as ever, and ESPN had the good sense to can him and move on.
I wish his current employer would do the same.
I'm tired, so very tired of all of the hate. All the name calling. All of division on both sides that is pulling this country apart. I'm tired of crosshairs over congressional districts and people telling me I'm going to hell if I vote one way or another. That's not America. That's Iran.
If we don't wake up, people like Limbaugh are going to have a great view of this country collapsing from atop a large pile of money.