Newsflash

Rush Limbaugh is a big, fat idiot.

Following on the "Obama will rape yo daughta" imagery of the latest McCain ad, blogger big girl eloquently observes, "I now have Rush Limbaugh telling me that the reason he gave his speech in front of the Victory Column was to remind everyone that he is black and has an enormous penis."

Yes, it's true. Here's Rush:

This, by the way, is a site that was chosen by Adolf Hitler because it had good aesthetic value for him to address (no, it's true) people. This is the Victory Tower. It's a phallic symbol out there and it's constructed there and Hitler did move it, moved it to this location in order to provide a good backdrop. (interruption) No, I'm not making analogies here. I'm just giving you a little history about the place..... ow, I've mentioned the fact that the Victory Tower is Hitler's phallic symbol, or a phallic symbol. They are not there now, but a couple of still shots that I have seen during show prep today of two giant Obama balloons very close to the top of the Victory Tower. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Proving, ladies and gentlemen, that the Reverend Jackson still has not succeeded in removing the nuts of The Messiah.

(Rush has been working an obsession with Obama's cock for a while now. As I wrote a while back on the New Republic website in an essay on the Republicans' instinct for "FNB"—F*gg*t, N*gg*r, B*tch—politics, "One of Limbaugh's ongoing jabs is that white female reporters find him sexually irresistible. 'Snerdley is convinced Maureen [Dowd] wants Barack Obama,' he sighs. 'I don't even want to go there.' He depicted Time's Ana Marie Cox as helpless before Obama's overpowering sexuality, putting the following thoughts into her head: 'Well, there's no question the power is crackling through his jeans!'")

Here's commenter "Anon Ymous" on the sexual semiotics of the McCain commercial:

1. First, two famous, attractive white women known in part (or in whole) for their promiscuity. [previously noted]
2. Immediately thereafter, photos of Obama and a voiceover describing him as "the BIGGEST celebrity in the world."
3. Next, camera flashes (which are obviously associated with publicity, but also with a different unsavory industry on the web... ahem).
4. Then, a shot which makes the tall, dark victory column awkwardly prominent...
5. Then, a second camera shot which pans up from the crowd and focuses on the tall column.
6. Finally, a voiceover and overlay pertaining to "drilling." (Even though offshore drilling is common line of attack for McCain, it seems oddly placed as the first volley in an ad that mostly focuses on Obama's celebrity status.)

What do you think? Paranoid? Or on the money? Before you answer, remember that these conservatives are folks who operate like this

In 1990, a Charleston-based GOP consultant, trying to turn out more Republican votes, found a nearly illiterate African American named Benjamin Hunt Jr. and paid his filing fee for Congress. Then he sent out thousands of fliers with a photo of Hunt standing in front of a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Hunt's white opponent won.

Again, I wrote about this in TNR (but you can't find the article online; in a blunder that really negates TNR's ability to be taken seriously as a journal of opinion, they lost all their archives in a computer error), "FNB politics can be tricky to write about, and to pin down, because it relies on surfacing deep-seated anxieties and archetypes that, when revealed to the light of day, appear ridiculous."

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future