The dark circus of Limbaugh, Santelli and Keyes

If the sclerotic humbug I heard come out of the voluble mouth of Rush Limbaugh yesterday was an authentic reflection of movement conservatism's determined pathology, then Barack Obama could be in for a grievous four years from which this country will emerge more polarized, more tribally hostile and poorer in spirit than ever.

Or not. I don't know, it's hard to say. I'm not a regular Limbaugh listener -- it had been roughly a year since I last heard him -- or group psychopathologist. For all I know, what he was preaching yesterday could have been an aberration of the extreme -- or the familiar; plus a good number of his listeners may chuckle and guffaw or just sit in stunned stupefaction at his bottomless drivel, as I did.

I kid you not, Limbaugh's rants were, at times, so childishly vacuous or borderline psychotic, I couldn't quite tell if he was kidding. There were moments when I was sure he was -- moments when I figured, Oh, this must be that Rush Limbaugh I've read about; Limbaugh the Entertainer, Limbaugh the Clown, Limbaugh the Court Jester who makes no pretensions at Limbaugh the Conservative Intellectual, an epithet which, I have also read, the unenumerated genuine Dittoheads accept unquestioningly.

But each time I suspected this, each time he cranked up the deafening irrationalities to the point at which a professional clown would yell "Gotcha! -- you didn't really believe that tommyrot, did you?" then he would go all quiet and somber, then repeat said irrationality with a grave and sorry solemnity, and then slide to a commercial break, during which, I gathered, we were all supposed to sadly absorb his gallant disgust.

To the particulars.

There was of course the matter of race, the matter of Limbaugh the color-blind equal opportunist who only wants us to get along, which naturally we would, if it weren't for, say, the Eric Holders of this otherwise fairest of lands always talking about race, which Limbaugh proceeded to do for at least one uninterrupted programming block.

Here, we were treated to Limbaugh the Fearless. He'll take 'em on one at a time -- all those liberally intimidating totalitarians who wish to crush your color-blind spirit and have, indeed, already managed to do so by and large. But they'll never, never break Rush's. He shall overcome.

Was this tinted by the comedic? The suggestively self-parodic? I thought so. And as I was thinking this I was also wondering how many others among us reported 20 or even 30 million listeners were thinking the very same thing; thinking, Rush, you knowing windbag you, you sure know how to tweak the absurd.

It is statistically, demographically impossible that I could be laughing at all this, while 19,999,999 others, to a man and woman, were swallowing it wholesale.

Yet, other segments were even better than that; better, that is, if Colbertlike entertainment was the goal, which it may have been. I don't know. Because I also can't read the mind of psychotics, if earnest he was.

For instance he opened his show by frothing that Barack Obama isn't bailing anyone out, that his stimulus and banking plans are all an immense hoax, designed, in cahoots with Nancy Pelosi, to "destroy this economy," which, Limbaugh added, they had already accomplished "in only 30 days." (Please don't ask me to explain why, in Limbaugh's opinion, Obama & Pelosi Inc. wished to assassinate our economic well-being. He never quite got around to that.)

By the second hour, however, Limbaugh was frothing that Mr. Obama is bailing everyone out, although true Americans -- the ones not being bailed out, despite everyone being bailed out (again, don't ask, it was all rather confusing) -- won't stand for it. Still, these noble many are, for now, staying quiet, silently, ominously "keeping score."

Whatever the hell did that mean? Ah, here was the best part -- that peculiar intersection at which the psychotic, hyperbolic right meets the psychotic, hyperbolic left. Bellowed Rush: A revolution is coming! -- a People's Revolution, a boiling over of simmering rage at Obama's unspecified crimes and sinister plots.

Yes, that's what he said, and he said it again, and again.

The subtlest of parody? Pure entertainment? An easy way to kill three hours and boost the next day's ratings? Or ... conviction? You got me.

But, to repeat, I was less meditative about Limbaugh's eccentricities than their vast reception, which perhaps isn't that vast after all. We have in our history suffered through the ravings of many a political Elmer Gantry only to find that, when push came to shove, their congregations weren't really that large or similarly motivated. Many were only hanging around for a good chuckle, or to marvel at the glibness, or to ponder that rare well-made point, and then move on.

If that's not the case with Limbaugh's wireless auditors, and far worse, if increasingly troubled economic times were to cause his seeming psychosis to metastasize, then things could get exceptionally ugly. But I have my doubts. I suspect the lop-sided mother lode of Americans will always see Rush Limbaugh as the three-ring circus clown he is, alongside the hysterical Rick Santelli and his "loser"-barking in ring two, and Alan Keyes and his "radical communist" derangements in ring three.