Fuck you, Rush.

Rush Limbaugh is a hack. He's the worst of the Republican Party. His hypocrisy is stunning. He's a sing-and-dance entertainer masquerading as some sort of political leader. And for reasons beyond my understanding, instead of running screaming in the other direction, the right has brought him into its warm embrace.

Rush Limbaugh is a douche. There, I said it. I wish more people on the right would say it, too. But I'm not going to apologize.

UPDATE: Ross Douthat has a more eloquent, balanced, and thorough critique. I know it's long, but it's a good read, and worth clicking through for the rest.

Just imagine, for a moment, how conservatives would react if four months after the worst defeat liberalism had suffered in a generation, an Olbermann (or a Moyers or a Michael Moore or a Bill Maher or whomever) showed up to deliver the keynote address at a liberal equivalent of CPAC, and during the course of his speech he blasted every Democrat who disagrees with him as a miserable sell-out, suggested that conservatives are fascists and conservatism a psychosis, lectured the crowd on the irrelevance of policy ideas to liberalism's political prospects, and insisted that the only blueprint liberals need to win elections is the one that Lyndon Johnson used to rout Barry Goldwater. And then further imagine that both before and after this speech, a series of left-of-center politicians ventured criticisms of Olbermann, only to beat a hasty and apologetic retreat as soon as he turned his fire on them. Conservatives would be chortling - and rightly so! Not because liberalism needs to purge or marginalize its Keith Olbermanns, or because impassioned liberal entertainers don't have a place in left-of-center discourse - but because when your political persuasion faces a leadership vacuum, you don't want to have it filled by someone who appeals to an impassioned but narrow range of voters, and whose central incentive is to maximize his own ratings.