If He's an Entertainer, I'm an Astronaut

I might have been six years old when I first learned how integral the bumble bee was to the human food chain. The Huffington Post article yesterday about the American bee population plummeting and the disastrous effect this is likely to have on those of us who eat scared the food I had digested up to that moment out of me. Then I remembered someone who eats far more than me and is certainly far more informed on such matters as the calamitous loss of bees and other pollinating insects, not to mention snakes and tigers and penguins and other wildlife that is dying off, according to the new study across three continents by the World Wildlife Fund to which HuffPost referred.

That person is of course Rush Limbaugh, also known as El Rushbo, a pseudonym he reminds us of to his own amusement quite often. El Rushbo goes on about what fools and fakers and worse environmentalists are -- and what hogwash environmental science is. The man once claimed that the BP oil spill was the result of a conspiracy of environmentalists, for God's sake. His fans, who are also tickled to be called ditto-heads, seem to be entertained by this -- just enough, I imagine, for Limbaugh to refer to himself as an entertainer when he suspects his role as a commentator has gotten him into some unsustainable mischief. Should Limbaugh be too embarrassed to do that for himself regarding the environment -- and I predict that moment is coming -- look for El Rushbo to hide behind the stations that carry him. "You take him too seriously, the man's an entertainer," will be some representative suit's mantra. What the hell, that's the way the New York Times and Michael Steele -- how entertaining is that combo? -- have referred to him.

If Limbaugh is an entertainer, I'm an astronaut.