[Ex-wife (from third marriage) says, “Welcome to my world”]

— BOOK: Sample Chapter —

In a desperate attempt to stay relevant as Republicans desert him in droves, Rush Limbaugh proudly chose Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Fox News to declare, “I want [Obama] to fail. … I shamelessly say … I want him to fail.” A few days later, amid stinging criticism from even some of his brethren, Limbaugh clarified his position by averring, “I support our president, like I have supported all presidents.” Shockingly, these statements are NOT quoted out of context. He appears to believe he is making sense. Logically fallacious? — or logical Faustus? You be the judge.

Limbaugh went on to clarify the clarification with his classic fingers-crossed-behind-the-back artifice. Deftly burying it at the end of his show, when listeners are about as numerous as Detroit Lions fans at the end of a home game, Rush pronounced: “What I’m actually doing is just throwing the absurdity … back in their pockmarked faces. … How can I support the president, but not his policies? … I illustrate absurdity by being absurd.”

Limbaugh, the uncontested emperor of ad hominem attacks, consistently employs the psychological projection of his own poisonous personality traits onto the enemy, i.e., anyone who disagrees with him. He was interviewed on MLK Day, sporting his new emperor’s clothes, by Sean Hannity of Fox News. Rush chose Hannity and Fox because he was tired of submitting to insipid softball interview questions — he wanted to be challenged. Hannity began the showdown Monday night after carrying Rush’s water around the studio several times to warm up. Limbaugh immediately sprang into his patented rapid-fire delivery of fallacies, prevarications, and mendacifications.

The exalted Excellence in Broadcasting Network talk show host showcased his latest ad hominem reference, the drive-by media (or the drive-bys, for short). Rush explains: “It’s a like a drive-by shooter except the microphones are the guns, (Sean giggles) … and they drive into groups of people [and] they report a bunch of totally wrong libelous stuff about people. They create a giant mess. Sometimes people get really harmed. They go out and try to destroy people’s careers. Then they get in the convertible, head on down the road and do it all over again, while people like you and me are left to clean up the mess with the truth. So I call them the drive-by media.”

Limbaugh followed this explanation by recalling a phenomenon he’d recently experienced: a Freudian truth dream. He recounts that in the dream, he seemed to be in two places at once while events unfolded around him. Then one of him started speaking through a bullhorn: “THIS IS RUSH H. LIMBAUGH THE THIRD, OF THE EXCELLENCE IN BROADCASTING TRUTH SQUAD! — I KNOW I’M IN THERE! — IF I DON’T COME OUT WITH MY HANDS UP — I’M COMING IN AFTER ME!” (— writer’s embellishment; thanks to National Lampoon).

Rush winked at Hannity and said, “What do ya s’pose that means, Sean?” ■