Idiot of the Week nominee: Rush "John" Limbaugh

As I write, a police bomb squad is investigating a suspicious package found on Rush Limbaugh's property in Palm Beach. Even if the package proves a practical joke, as opposed to some random innocuous object, it will be uncool because no matter how powerful or how idiotic a radio talker is, Americans shouldn't be threatening or pretending to threaten his life just for what he says. I doubt whether this is the first time Limbaugh's person or property have been put under an apparent threat, but it does seem like Limbaugh hit a new low this week. He was provoked into it by the testimony of a college student before a committee of congressional Democrats in favor of access to contraception. According to Limbaugh's outraged calculations, the student's claim that her university include contraception in its medical coverage meant that she wanted to be paid to have sex. "What does that make her?" the radio host asked his audience before answering, "It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute." In his fury, Limbaugh grew confused, first concluding that subsidizing contraception made taxpayers into pimps before determining that they had, in fact, become johns -- clients of prostitutes. We are all virtual johns, apparently, since we pay for co-eds to have sex, according to Limbaugh, but not for them to have sex with us. But Limbaugh, with that legendary wit of his, wants value for his money. In another of those comedic epiphanies that liberals just won't get, he proposed that, in return for taxpayer-subsidized contraception, the co-ed should record her sexual encounters and post them online for everyone to watch.

Predictably enough, Democrats demand an apology from Limbaugh and insist that Republicans rebuke him. Just as certainly, I can predict that no apology will arrive, Limbaugh and his loyal listeners falling back on the ever-popular "humorist" defense. Nevertheless, readers of the news site where I read the story are paying Limbaugh in kind with equally predictable jokes about his weight and drug use. The world will go on as before. Both the spectacular non sequitur at the heart of his rant and the public tastelessness of it entitle Limbaugh for serious consideration, even if you're convinced of that judge's epic stupidity regarding the Obama bestiality joke. But Limbaugh really merits another form of recognition. Since Limbaugh smeared that student by name, I'd like to see her father man up, make his way to EIB headquarters, and give the great bloviator the thrashing of his life. Wouldn't that be funny?