LORD LIMBAUGH: I GOT YOUR RECESSION RIGHT HERE, LOSERS

Think Progress is reporting that in his speech last night to wealthy Heritage Foundation check-writers, Rush Limbaugh boasted about his own radio success and pooh-poohed the notion of a recession, which is something that's presumably affecting only us peasants:

LIMBAUGH: But during all this growth I haven't lost any audience. I’ve never had financially a down year. There's supposedly a recession, but we've got -- what is this May? Back in February we already had 102% of 2008 overbooked for 2009. [applause] So I always believed that if we're going to have a recession, just don't participate. [laughter]

Audio at the link -- where we're also told:

Limbaugh is no stranger to belittling the poor and dismissing the economic troubles of others. In March, Limbaugh scoffed at a question on homeless children, asking, “Would somebody tell me the last time you saw a kid sleeping under a bridge?”

Let me add some more evidence of Limbaugh's utter contempt for ordinary citizens -- an excerpt from a 2003 New York Observer column by Terry Golway. I've posted this a few times over the years, but it bears repeating.

As I don't get a chance to listen to daytime radio, I can't say I'm familiar with the civic culture of Limbaugh nation. So I was mildly surprised to hear that nation's maximum leader carrying on about the stupidity of health insurance and the admirable but regrettably forgotten custom of simply paying Yankee dollars in exchange for services rendered. After all, Mr. Limbaugh told us, that's what he does when he visits the doctor! Why, he has two or three or four (he can't keep count!) health-insurance plans, including one foisted upon him by the union of radio blowhards, but he never uses these plans because he pays cash money for his medical needs. What a great nation we would be if only we were all like him! What kind of crypto-Euro-socialists have we become, that we rely on insurance companies to help pay for services we need?

Mr. Limbaugh's contempt for health insurance is matched only by his impatience with medical forms, which he sees as yet another nefarious big-government plot to keep people intimidated, ignorant and dependent. In the great man's view, the doctors are like liberal Democrats, and their staffs are the equivalent of paper-pushing bureaucrats devoid of creativity, energy and all those things that once made us great. Why, when Mr. Limbaugh attempted to pay cash for his X-rays, the bureaucrats were aghast. They didn't know what to do! They were trained to ask for an insurance card, and when Mr. Limbaugh declined to produce one -- remember, he doesn't know where his cards are, because he never uses them, because he is a rugged individualist -- why, they fumbled and sputtered and consulted their rules and procedures!

Oh, there was no mistaking Mr. Limbaugh's contempt for these little people with their little minds. And why do these little people exist, and why do they hand us those forms? They want us to be dependent. If we were all like Rush, we would throw away the forms and cut up our insurance cards and pay for our doctor's visits and X-rays and cancer surgery in cash, like we did back in the old days when we were great.

The great hero of the people, Rush Limbaugh.