I GUESS THE BRITS KNOW WHO THE REAL LEADER OF THE GOP IS

I'm back -- thanks Tom, Kevin, and aimai, for holding the fort.

And I see that Toby Harnden, the U.S. editor of Britain's Telegraph, has revealed a deep and subtle understanding of the structure of the American GOP. Harnden, whose delicate sensibilities were offended by the Wanda Sykes routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner, wrote:

There's not much room for differing interpretations of what Sykes said. She called Limbaugh a terrorist and a traitor, suggested that he be tortured and wished him dead.

What was his crime? Hoping that Obama's policies -- which he views as socialist -- will fail.

That's way, way beyond reasoned debate or comedy and Obama's reaction to it was astonishing.

Imagine if a comedian "joked" that Obama was a terrorist who was guilty of treason and should be tortured and allowed to die. There would justifiably be an outcry.

To Harnden, you see, that's the appropriate analogy: say these things about Limbaugh and it's analogous to saying them about the president of the United States.

I'll confess that what Harnden wrote opened my eyes. See, I would have said that if, for instance, Dennis Miller had made similar jokes about Keith Olbermann as President McCain's first WHCD (which is easy to imagine), those jokes would have been analogous to the Sykes jokes about Limbaugh. But I realize now that I would have been wrong. This is Limbaugh we're talking about. Limbaugh, obviously, is the shadow president of the United States. Limbaugh is the head of the Republican Party.

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Or perhaps Limbaugh's just a heartbeat away. This is at Lucianne.com right now:



I guess Lucianne & Co. still don't understand that that's our dream GOP ticket for 2012.

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Oh, and didn't Sykes also make jokes about waterboarding Joe Biden? Nothing about that in Toby Harnden's column. Maybe I hallucinated that.

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UPDATE: Oooh, snap:

Obamatard of the Day: Wanda Skyles

I wonder if Wanda Skyles was born stupid or just took too many stupid pills? It is hard to tell....

Yeah, Wanda Skyles -- what a moran!