Nobody flinched to hear Rush Limbaugh was decamping down the aisle for the fourth time. Nor would anyone but an alien be surprised to hear America's favorite talk show host might one day embark on the marital quinella.
He's rich and she's a babe descended from John Adams, star of the HBO mini-series--end of story.
Not so fast, Kemosabe. In the cocksure, cockamamie world of the Conservative Bowel Movement, the fourth time El Rushbo swore his fealty to his latest newly beloved the ceremony arrived with a peppermint twist. Rather than a siren song from the Evangelicals fooled into thinking he was one of their own, America's favorite talkmeister turned to the tune of $1 million to piano man Elton John, last seen in the pages of Architectural Digest showing off his Los Angeles pied a clouds with his longtime and very male partner.
Elton John is gay, gay, gay, gay--and therefore the perfect complement to the bully who uses his pulpit to embrace the mythical family values that hold the Right together like so much spilt oil on a hot summer's day in the Gulf.
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road... or so you might think. In fact the bloviator and his beloved show a perfect consistency in the do-what-I say Fundamentalism now at the rotting core of what used to be the Conservative movement.
Go back-back-back-back to that unsettling moment when you learned Rush Limbaugh was popping Vicodin like M&Ms, about the time Mr. John was performing at the Grammys with the gay-bashing Eminem. It makes about as much sense as this headline Saturday from the USA Today web site: "Elton John sings at Rush Limbaugh's wedding; Ozzy Osbourne is new health columnist."
Or, as late-night host Jimmy Fallon put it: "According to Rush, gay people can sing at weddings. Just not their own." Or, as Bill Maher put it: "[I]nstead of throwing rice, throw Vicodin."
Amen, brothers and sisters. In order to understand the logic, you have to understand that when preacher man Ted Haggart engages with a male prostitute, or pain-pill-popper Limbaugh marries for the fourth time while being serenaded by he most famously gay singer in the world, the foolish consistency is consistently foolish.
The Conservative Bowel Movement is built on what is worst about America, namely hypocrisy, conformity, and intolerance. One looking for the right metaphor might point out that this man who talks for a living is literally deaf. But one look at his new wife tells you Rush Limbaugh sure ain't blind.