I was away this weekend and am now in an incapacitated Washington. I’m catching up on some things, including finally getting to focus on more than the angriest-looking image Headline News could find from the Rush speech this weekend, which was playing while I was waiting for a plane yesterday. This, so far, is the silliest analysis of the speech I’ve read:
But strip away the platitudes and cheap applause lines about freedom, self-reliance and the virtues of capitalism, and you’re left with the subject that really interests Rush Limbaugh: himself. The conservative talker with the self-professed “talent on loan from God” spoke incessantly in the first person: there were more “I’s” in his CPAC address than in an Idaho potato field. One clear message emerged from the speech:
If the conservative movement were Rush in Rush’s view of the world, why would he bother to encourage others, educate others? “Talent on loan from God” is part of a persona and success story Rush Limbaugh has written and lived these last 20-plus years (as, I suspect, most if not all of regular listeners get). If I worked for Salon I’d be afraid he encourages the next motivational conservative phenom before long.