What do Rush Limbaugh and Beauty Contests Have in Common?

What do Rush Limbaugh and Beauty Contests have in common?

Nobody pays attention to either of them until they do something really stoooopid.

Okay, that’s not exactly true.

To be specific, Limbaugh has 13.5 million listeners on any given week, and the 2007 Ms. America contest drew in a (“nosedive”) 2.39 million viewers last January. So, in all fairness, someone is actually watching and / or listening.

But let’s also be real. Limbaugh is king of A.M. talk-radio. And who the hell ever heard of anyone listening to talk-radio? Anyone, that is, who is not a “dittohead.” Rush is like a king of a desert empty except for his weirdly pissed-off cult followers. And Ms. America took up residence on the Country Music Channel, which – while there will always be die-hard country music fans – is not exactly center-stage of the entertainment industry.

More to the point, however, is that (unlike, say, Stephen Colbert or Michael Moore) these two cultural constructs from a by-gone era are not in front of the mainstream American populace very much at all. Moore wins Oscars and pisses people off. Colbert roasts Dubya and pisses people off. Rush…well, he is ranting into his own hermetically sealed little kingdom, boarders closed. Ms. America? Ms. Universe? Who gives a shinola?

No, in order for either of these two icons of chauvinism to survive in the lime-light of public interest they have to make a comment about “phony soldiers” or fall on their booties in Mexico or become a drug-addicted hypocrite or release black-mail photos or just generally make asses of themselves before anyone in the general populace gives them any notice.

What do Ms. Teen USA South Carolina and Rush Limbaugh have in common?

They both answer questions with rambling, incoherent, boorishly anglophile gibberish.

Impeach Dick Cheney.