The Sunday Smirk – Rush Repeats

While it may have been common knowledge in the Dittohead universe that Rush Limbaugh was nominated for the Nobel Prize this year, the story went largely unreported out here in the real world.

Even though Limbaugh had no chance of winning, now that Al Gore has won the prize, Limbaugh is in a snit of jealousy:

LIMBAUGH: My lawyers at the Landmark Legal Foundation are looking into the possibility of filing an objection with the Nobel committee over the unethical tampering for this award that Al Gore is engaging in. This is clearly above and beyond the pale. I mean, this might happen in high school class president elections and so forth, but this is shameless.

Rush’s nomination sounds on the surface like a stunt dreamed up by Sascha Baron Cohen. A deeper dig reinforces this perception.

For starters, it appears that Limbaugh de facto nominated himself for the prize. The nomination went out under the letterhead of the Landmark foundation, a rightwing nonprofit for which Limbaugh is an unpaid advisor. (Landmark’s donors include relatives of Richard Melon Scaife, the Pittsburgh heir and newspaper publisher who funded the Arkansas Project, a smear campaign against the Clintons that served as the prototype for what we now know as Swiftboating.)

Landmark’s president, Mark Levin, is a snarling, unappealing ideologue who made his name in the 1990s as a Clinton-basher on cable news. Levin is a Rush acolyte and wannabe who even has his own talk show.

Landmark and Levin are essentially Limbaugh’s lapdogs. Even if the idea to nominate Rush didn’t come from Limbaugh himself, it had to have been done with his approval and guidance.

It is laughable to think that anyone as divisive and hateful as Rush Limbaugh would believe he had the remotest chance of winning a peace prize of any sort. And yet in his nomination of Limbaugh Levin cited Rush’s “nearly two decades of tireless efforts to promote liberty, equality and opportunity for all humankind, regardless of race, creed, economic stratum or national origin. These are the only real cornerstones of just and lasting peace throughout the world.”

Now that is funny.

But the main proof that the nomination was a publicity stunt is the fact that it had no official standing from the getgo:

Nominations for the Prize may be made by a broad array of qualified individuals, including former recipients, members of national assemblies and congresses, university professors (in certain disciplines), international judges, and special advisors to the Prize Committee. In some years as many as 199 nominations have been received. The Committee keeps the nominations secret and asks that nominators do the same. Over time many individuals have become known as “Nobel Peace Prize Nominees”, but this designation has no official standing.

Rush is so busy smearing 12 year olds and wounded veterans that it is doubtful he could have found the time to go to Norway to accept the award had he won. However, we’ll have to see if he and his lapdogs at Landmark will find the time to try to steal the limelight from Gore’s much-deserved win by launching a smear campaign against Gore and the Nobel committee.