In Brief: Limbaugh Knows He's Better Than You Are (Despite All Evidence to the Contrary):
Our story so far: torpid talk slob Rush Limbaugh spent three days last week calling 30 year-old Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" who wants to fuck as often as her vagina can take it while the government pays for her birth control because she can't afford it. In the course of the three days, Limbaugh said he wanted Fluke and other women to send him videos of their intercourse. He talked about the "babes" fucking around. He said, repeatedly, that Sandra Fluke wants to be paid for having sex. He equated contraceptive pill coverage with a requirement to buy everyone a car if they like having sex in the back seat.

In the wake of the understandable uproar, sponsors began to flee Limbaugh's show this weekend. On Saturday, Limbaugh released a statement where he once again decided that the issue was about what women do with their leisure time and asked if the government should provide running shoes to those who want to exercise (meaning "Not Limbaugh"). He offered, "I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation," by which he meant "slut" and "prostitute," although one could certainly read that as saying, "I should have said 'whore' and 'cunt.'" And, after days of personally attacking Fluke, by name, Limbaugh said, "I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke...in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir." It's like a mugger taking your wallet and beating your face in, but saying that it's nothing personal. It's just business.

Today, on his show, Limbaugh went further. He insisted that his offense boiled down to the aforementioned two words, which is pretty much the definition of "doesn't get it" or "doesn't give a shit." Oh, he was sincere in apologizing, saying that he had become like people on the left, that he "ended up descending to their level."

That's right. The man who used to get rid of callers he didn't like with "caller abortions," complete with a vacuum sound and a baby crying, the man who mocked Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease with exaggerated shaking, said that "I've always tried to maintain a very high degree of integrity" on his show. Because he's so fucking noble.

Oh, he also admitted that he slanted the story about Fluke's testimony (well, really, he outright lied, but still...). Yes, he blamed the CNS story, "Sex-Crazed Co-Eds Going Broke Buying Birth Control, Student Tells Pelosi Hearing Touting Freebie Mandate," which he had cited repeatedly last week. Said Limbaugh today, "I focused on that because I was simply trying to persuade people, change people's minds." Screw facts. Screw the whole story. All that matters is that dittoheads know what to ditto.

And thus Limbaugh will go on, damaged, but unbowed. He's now tainted, but you can bet that all of his listeners see him as the victim here and that, six months, a year from now, nearly all of those sponsors will be back. But maybe, just maybe, he will be poisonous enough to be nothing more than a deranged cult leader, a deaf and dumb and dying dinosaur in the tar pit of his fading career.