Leonard Pitts Jr: Rush Limbaugh is a "clown who perverts conservatism for attention"

Wrestling and punditry are common in their theatrical performance and use of personas. Pundit personas tend to fall into two categories, mischievous and provocative or populist and affirming. In wrestling, Villains are referred to as 'heels' and heroes are called 'faces'. Success in punditry is measured by ones ability to grab attention and not necessarily by their prescience or accuracy. Therefore being loved or hated is negligible to success, all that matters is one's ability to draw.

Whilst most people become outraged by the provocative things 'heel' pundits say, there are others who are less threatened because they see through the act.

Previously I've mentioned how some pundits view their peers. Liberal comedian Janeane Garofalo believes controversial conservative Ann Coulter is a "performance artist" channeling Andy Kaufman. Whilst Bill O'Reilly sees her as a satirist not unlike Jonathan Swift.

Keith Olbermann derisively refers to Rush Limbaugh as a "comedian". Similarly, columnist Leonard Pitts Jr of the Miami Herald refers to the prominent talker as a "clown" who's main agenda is to attract attention

Read Leonard Pitts Jr's taunting column in response to Rush' hope for a failed Obama Presidency

Far-right Obama critics get a reply
Not because what Limbaugh said on his radio program a few days before the inauguration was an outrage -- outrage is the point, remember? -- but rather, because of what the thing he said says about him and his fellow clowns.

"I hope he fails."

The irony is that Limbaugh and the other clowns would have you believe they are bedrock defenders of this country, that they love it more than the rest of us, more than anything.

That's a lie. Limbaugh just told us so, emphatically.

It's not the country they love. It's the attention. The ideology, their perversion of conservatism, is but a means toward that end.