That Amazing Tap Dancing Rush Limbaugh

You might not want to read this if you don't like Rush Limbaugh and don't want to get angry.

You remember that scene in Chicago, near the end, where Billy Flynn has to figure out a way to get Roxie Hart out from under her diary? Well Billy Flynn ain't got nothing on that old hoofer, Rush Limbaugh, defending his client Donald Rumsfeld.

As you probably know, Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, faced some tough questions from the soldiers in Iraq this week. In particular he faced a question about why our soldiers don't have enough Armor to Armor their vehicles. And the quick-stepping Rush Limbuagh steps to the center of the stage and begins his dance.

First he attacks the soldier. He acts incredulous that a soldier would actually question his commander in chief in this way. "And what struck me odd about this was those of us who have employees, we all have meetings with them and we all let them blow off steam, but we do it in private. . . . You just don't see that kind of near insubordination among rank and file military to the secretary of defense." There it is. If only the soldier was a good American, he would ask things like "So Mr. Rumsfeld, what is your favorite plane?"

Then Limbaugh loosens his collar and makes an attempt to defuse the situation with humor.

So I was going to work out a bit yesterday. In fact, I brought Snerdley in here, and I said, "You've seen this Rumsfeld story?" He said, "Oh, yeah." I said, "Well, I tell you, I want to do something. I want to have a little fun with this today." I said, "At some point I'm going to talk about this story and I'm going to bring you guys in here and say, 'Look, if it's a new policy now that employees have their bitch sessions in public, I'm going to bring you and Dawn and Brian in here and I want you to start complaining about the fact that the ice machine doesn't fill up every day, that you still have to sometimes wait for it, that your new 30-inch computer display monitor hasn't come in yet and you're still slaving away your 23-inch display," seventeen-inch display; sorry, Mr. Snerdley, and Dawn wanted to explain that the dishes in the dining room are not the right shade of white and gold that she ordered, and what are we going to do about it.

All these, you know, crazy complaints, because nobody that works here has any.

Of course the humor hear works a bit better if you think that a soldier requesting more life-saving armor on his vehicle is more or less the equivalent of an office worker requesting a larger monitor. If you think those are two different things, well, you may not find Mr. Limbaugh's tap dance all that amusing. There's a possibility you might even find it offensive.

But Rush isn't done yet. With a stylish throwing of the jacket off stage, he brings out his big guns. A Reporter may have helped the soldier formulate his question! This is proven by an unsourced e-mail reprinted at the Drudge Report, so it's bound to be true. And, as others have pointed out, even if it is true, did the same reporter also coach all the other attendees to the meeting to cheer when the question was raised? Does it make it any less of a valid question? Even Rush concedes that none of this gets Mr. Rumsfeld off the hook for his lousy answer to this question."But, hey, look, secretary of defense, he's going to go up and answer questions. He's gotta be prepared for whatever he's going to get. He can't say he shouldn't be prepared for them."

And then in a final linguistic flourish he moves to one of his favorite points. Based on the tenuous evidence that a reporter was involved, and reporters are liberals, and liberals feign concern about American Soldiers dying, we liberals want more Soldiers to die.

The answer to this is they're just livid -- the press, the leftists in this country are just upset that there are not enough deaths to get people outraged and protesting in the treats against the war. They're mad that these doctors are saving lives. They want deaths! They've been counting deaths up to 1,000, they hoped that would get Bush out of office. They still want Bush out of office; make no mistake about it. They still want Bush discredited and it's all part of coming back in '06 and '08, and so there are too many lives being saved over there.

I don't know what this has to do with the additional question, as this seems the complete opposite. I mean if we really wanted more soldiers to die, wouldn't we be in favor of Rumsfeld not armoring the troops? That probably does lead to more deaths, doesn't it? But of course the dancing is so good, you can't help missing out that the argument doesn't make very much sense.

This is a long post. I guess I'll cut it off here. But this whole post is funnier if you imagine Rush Limbaugh tap dancing.