Rush Limbaugh Has a Dream

Mike DeVine says the talk radio host embodies MLK's dream of a color-free world

WHO: Mike gamecock DeVine

WHERE: Red State

THESIS: Rush Limbaugh is the embodiment of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream because he "dares to judge all by the content of their character."

REALLY? Yes, he's endearingly earnest

RUSH'S MIRACLES: Helping DeVine ditch affirmative action, Democrats, and political correctness. Liberating white people everywhere from "false white guilt" after Obama's inauguration, and inviting them to join Rush in "the post-racial world he has lived in for most if not all of his life."

WHAT HURTS THE MOST: "It is with great sadness that I see a man whose complete absence of racism made me receptive to his conservative message, is now vilified by the ignorant and the vile, as the antithesis"

EVIDENCE OF CONSERVATIVE FONDNESS FOR BLACK PEOPLE: It's "invariably mostly the Republicans" who hire them

THE MOMENT DEVINE EMBRACED RUSH'S COLOR-BLIND WORLD: "I was a prolific criminal defense trial lawyer and so had a lot of contact with police officers. One day, while at the City Police Department, I made an offhand comment to a black female sergeant that assumed she was a Democrat. I was an official with the county party at the time. The Sergeant rebuked me with a kind of righteous indignation that had never been directed at me by anyone I didn't call Daddy."

AN AFFECTING MOMENT:

I attended an event promoting the Rush Limbaugh Show, with Mike Gallagher hosting a special appearance by Bo Snerdly, Rush Limbaugh's longtime business partner, silent sidekick on the air, and call screener.

The moment I saw Snerdly, I understood what it was about Rush that so appealed to me. I was already kind of alone among my democrat friends in defending Rush against charges of racism, and wondered why he didn't defend himself more, and then I saw Snerdly and immediately understood this man called Rush, because I saw something in him that saw in my father and, dare I say, in me.

I never had known that Snerdly was black. Rush never mentioned that fact despite all the libel and slander against him and despite the fact that he regularly spoke back and forth with Snerdly (not heard) about such charges on the air.