Column“Do you know where you’re going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you?” – Diana Ross
After four luxuriously stupid days off – an epoch for an editor, really – wherein I spent much time, energy and money hurling myself down snowy mountainsides doing what other people call “Tahoe” and I call “please don’t look at me, no seriously, please go over to that other slope,” and less than zero time doing anything of intellectual merit, summoning the synapses has been something of a hurdle. Use it or lose, the saying goes, and is it ever true. When I found myself actually watching The Last of the Mohicans and meaning it this weekend, I decided to seek help.
I found solace in Rush Limbaugh. Rush, issuer of the hilarious little tirade meant to poke some good old fun, has been losing advertisers left and right. As usual, the liberal media, but now I’m being redundant, is having a field day with a couple silly words that Rush used merely to demonstrate absurdity by being absurd. Or is that illustrate? I can never keep it straight.
After initially refusing to say those two magic words (no, not those words), Rush caved and apologized for his use of the infamous two words (in case you’ve been living under a rock, or perhaps lying unconscious on a ski slope, they were “slut” and “prostitute”), presumably because he could no longer say it with flowers. He did not, however, apologize for the 53 associated insults or the tirade generally, which only made things worse, so then he really had to apologize, for real this time, for all of it, sweetheart, if you’ll just listen to me, I can change, I promise:
“This is the mistake I made – in fighting them on this issue last week I became like them, against my own instincts, against my own knowledge, against everything I know to be right or wrong,” Limbaugh said. “I descended to their level when I used those two words to attack Sandra Fluke. That was my error and I became like them. And I feel very badly about that. I always try to maintain a very high degree of integrity and independence on this program.”
To which I say: God, I am so sorry, Rush. If I had known all this time you didn’t have balls, I…so sorry. Really sorry.
Wracked with guilt, I took an aspirin. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. But then I remembered that relevancy is the key to maintaining a sane and sharp mind, so I turned from Rush to Tina Fey.
“What has your cult done for you lately?” Tina admonished me from the pages of Bossypants, after describing how devoting her life to the cult of comedy has resulted in such things as a loving husband, fame, fortune, and creative fulfillment.
It’s a good question. What has your cult done for you, lately? For Limbaugh’s Dittoheads, the withered fruits are a conservative cornucopia: Stubborn irrelevance, delusional insecurity, and so much more! Nuclear marriage to a mean streak. The delightfully jarring pitter patter of screaming slurs. Fear in the garage, desperation in every pot.
Something tells me Tina’s no Dittohead, unless I missed that 30 Rock, but her question is the best one I’ve heard since before I didn’t have snow between my ears because it applies equally to everyone. “What has your cult done for you lately?”
We all have a cult (or two, or even three, if we’re extra slutty), be it politics, sex, sexual politics, food, health, religion, tech, work, fashion.
Green.
And while it’s always easy to point fingers at the colicky cult that is the Grand Old Party, we should also look at our own. Because what has the green cult done for us, lately?
This is the latest installment in your editor’s column, The Insider’s Guide to Life.
Image: Daveybot