"Drill, Baby, Drill" - The paranoids strike back

Perhaps mentioning the latest nutcase conspiracy theorizing from Rush Limbaugh gives him more attention than he deserves (though it's not entirely groundless to describe him as one of the most important and influential Republican spokesmen these days, so he may rate a little attention for that reason alone) ...

... but here's an item that beautifully illustrates how difficult it is nowadays for parody to keep one step ahead of the lunacy pervading so much actual political discourse right now. Who can resist?

=> A few days ago, in connection with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the public-relations challenge it poses for the "Drill, Baby, Drill" crowd, I quoted a comment by my friend Perry Deess:

This spill was orchestrated by the Democrats as a prelude to introducing energy legislation, just as the Goldman Sachs investigation was a sham to move forward with the socialist regulation of the finance industry.

That was supposed to be ironic, of course. And I added some sarcastic elaboration:

That analysis sounds right to me ... but, of course, what Sarah Palin and her friends call the "lamestream media" have largely ignored this obvious connection. I expect that Fox News (with help from assorted Republican pundits and bloggers) will break through the cover-up.

=> Well, so much for irony. Here's Rush Limbaugh on April 29:

I want to get back to the timing of the blowing-up, the explosion out there, in the Gulf of Mexico, of this oil rig. [ Blah, blah ....] What better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I'm just noting the timing here.

To be fair, Limbaugh's free-association here doesn't necessarily point to the Obama "regime" itself. It might have been "hard-core environmentalist whackos" even more extreme than that. And the timing is certainly suspicious, isn't it?



Previously: Rush: "Jury's still out" on whether it's a "coincidence" that an oil rig exploded just before Earth Day

Stay tuned ...

--Jeff Weintraub