From: darsie@eecs.ucdavis.edu (Richard Darsie)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Bluster's Last Stand
Date: 5 Nov 92 21:47:53 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of California, Davis


                        BLUSTER'S LAST STAND
                      A Cure for Rush Syndrome?

                          by R. V. Scheide

   The scene: a Quonset hut at a secret location high in the Sierra. I 
am undergoing analysis by Dr. Iman Voivoid, the world's foremost media 
psychologist. I explain my problem to him.
   "The dream, the nightmare, is always the same. I'm at the Reagan 
ranch, having afternoon lemonade with Ron and Nancy. Ronny nods off 
about halfway through. I can't seem to get a passage from Peter 
Lawford's posthumous biography out of my head: that Nancy, when she was 
an up-and-coming actress, was rumored to have Hollywood's hottest lips.
   "Suddenly, she and I are alone, facing each other through an 
impossibly small doorway.  Somehow, I squeeze through the tiny opening 
and into a large, cavernous ballroom. Mrs. Reagan, in a red evening 
gown, beckons from the center of the room.  As we kiss, I see our 
reflection in a floor-length mirror along the back wall.  In stop-motion 
photography, I see my image age and shrivel, like a grape turning into a 
raisin; at the same time, she drops 20 years. To my horror, I can't 
break free...but just before my final spark is extinguished, I wake up.
   "Well, that's it, that's the dream.  What do you think?"
   Dr. Voivoid strokes his black-and-silver goatee, pushes in on the 
nosepiece of his Ray-Ban Baloramas.  Plaid slacks stick out from under 
a white lab coat.  He clicks across the floor in black cowboy boots, 
grabs the dental chair I am sitting in, and spins it.  I do about 10 
revolutions before he jars me to a halt.
   "You've been watching the Rush Limbaugh show, haven't you?" he 
hisses.  I had heard Voivoid was good, but his diagnosis startles me.  I 
have been listening, reading and watching Rush Limbaugh heavily for 2 
months now.  Even though the nightmares started several weeks ago, I 
hadn't made the connection.  
   "You are not the first to show up here with what I call Rush 
Syndrome," Dr. Voivoid explains.  "What I have discovered is that while 
Mr. Limbaugh jokes that his show is addictive, it actually is. 
Stupidity, it seems, is infectious."
   "You mean I'm infected?"
   "That's the bad news. The good news is that I have perfected a cure. 
In order to begin the healing process, It will be necessary for you to 
complete the nightmare."
   Dr. Voivoid has stored the text from "The Way Things Ought To Be", 
Limbaugh's book, which currently resides near the top of the New York 
Times' bestseller list, in a computer that sits in a corner of the hut.  
He attaches electrodes running from a switchboard to my forehead and 
temples.
   "Most of this book was useless," he says, "as far as my research has 
been concerned.  The guy can't handle a paragraph, let alone an entire 
book. But I did find the 'Limbaugh Lexicon' in the back quite useful. I 
have used it to create a feedback loop that distills the very essence of 
Limbaughdian thought - if it can be called thought. I'm going to play it 
for you now."
   He throws a switch, and a slight humming builds inside my noggin.  
Rush's voice fades in:  "Talent on loan from God. Ronald Reagan. With 
half my brain tied behind my back. Ronald Reagan. Documented to be 
almost always right; 97.9 percent of the time. Ronald Reagan. Dadalup, 
dadalup, dadalup!"  As the loop begins repeating, it picks up speed. I 
become dizzy and pass out.
   I slip into the Reagan nightmare again; however, this time I do not 
wake up from Nancy's poisonous pucker.  As she sucks the final life out 
of me, there is a bright flash of white light and I'm thrown clear. I 
come to in a world colored red and black. Jackbooted soldiers with 
crucifixes around their necks goose-step in front of me as they deliver 
straight-arm salutes to a featureless blob high above on a podium. 
Gradually the figure becomes clearer.  It's Mussolini...no. It's Rush.
   "Holy shit!"  Now, I'm awake.  Dr. Voivoid is removing a hypo from a 
vein in my left arm.  A cool blast of cocaine hits me. "What the hell, 
doc?"
   "A speedball.  I'm sorry, I should have warned you. You were slipping 
into a state I call 'conservative fugue.' The cocaine is to wake you up. 
The heroin will calm your nerves. You were out for a considerable time."
   While I was unconscious, Dr. Voivoid has moved me to the lab's 
theater, where a giant-screen TV displays multiple episodes of Rush 
Limbaugh, the TV show. "Now," he tells me, "the healing can begin."
   I settle down as the heroin begins to take hold. Dr. Voivoid explains 
that Rush's hate act is nothing new. Father Coughlin, the Depression-era 
radio priest, pulled a similar gig. Millions would tune into his Sunday 
broadcasts, which featured virulent attacks on liberalism, communism and 
Jews. By 1942 the attacks had gotten out of hand, even by Catholic 
standards, and the Church silenced him.
   "If Rush is a modern-day Coughlin," I ask, "is it true what they say, 
that he's the most dangerous man in America?"
   Dr. Voivoid smiles.  "Hardly. Sure, he has 13 million listeners - 
Coughlin had 40 million, by the way - his book is a bestseller, the TV 
show looks like it's going to fly. But who's buying? It's not the 
majority of Americans, as he would suggest. No, it's a small minority, 
comprised of rednecks and corporate nerds, who revere this demagogue 
because that's the way they get their kicks, through projecting their 
own self-loathing onto others. Interestingly, he is even sicker than 
they are."
   "Sicker? How so?"
   "It was his frequent use of the word 'emasculate' in his book that 
tipped me off," Dr. Voivoid says.  "Clearly, he has obsessive-compulsive 
neurosis brought on by castration anxiety. He has failed to resolve 
conflicts, which I believe are of a sexual nature, and his show is a way 
of acting out this failure."
   Dr. Voivoid isolates one of the screen images and brings it up to 
full screen.  A chorused, distorted guitar wails in the background as 
Rush returns after a commercial. He is playing air guitar to the backing 
track.  "See how musical I am, my friends," he blathers.  "Even though 
I'm a conservative, I'm not a stuffed shirt; I'm hip."
   "Notice," Dr. Voivoid interrupts, hitting the pause button, "the 
movements of the right hand - the picking hand. Those are long strokes 
he's taking. See how when the song ends he uses an abrupt, jerking 
motion and a look of release crosses his face. I suggest this is a 
simulated masturbation. What a 'rush' this must be in front of such a 
large audience."
   The tape rolls again, and Limbaugh goes into a hate-filled monologue 
concerning Sinead O'Connor's Pope-ripping performance on "Saturday Night 
Live".  "Sinead O'Connor, for those of you who may not know it, is a 
horrible, talentless, bald-headed female singer. She is irrelevant, she 
is nothing more than an irritant; she grates," Rush screeches.
   Voivoid runs the Sinead video again. Screams Rush: "OH, STUFF IT! 
STUFF IT WHERE THE SUN DON'T SHINE, YOU BITCH!!" He tears up a picture 
of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and then Sinead. "Stupid, worthless little 
tramp!"
   "This is an all-too-typical example of how Limbaugh's obsessive-
compulsive neurosis has manifested itself in an authoritarian 
personality," Dr. Voivoid continues. "All points of view beside his own 
are excluded, just as callers to his show who differ with him are 
screened out or cut off. In addition, his hatred toward Sinead is 
extended to all women, and all men for that matter, who dare to differ 
from *his* societal norms."
   Limbaugh's flabby jowls flap in the multiple screens as he 
demonstrates just that. An attack on Magic Johnson for daring to 
criticize Bush's AIDS policy. Repeated put-downs of so-called 
"feminazis", militant homosexuals and all things liberal.  Never-ending 
defenses of supply-side economics and the free market. Crocodile tears 
shed over the lack of prayer in public schools and the decline in 
traditional family values. Again, I begin to feel dizzy, nauseous.
   A claw-like hand squeezes my shoulder. It's Dr. Voivoid. "You can end 
this, you know," he says soothingly. "His illness does not have to be 
yours. Here. Try this."  He hands me the remote control. I point it at 
the giant screen and push "off", and the gibbering buffoon fades into 
oblivion.
   Immediately, I feel better.
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