The Elephantiger in the room

Not to turn this blog all political, but I think it bodes well for the Democratic party that today I switched on Rush Limbaugh for a solid 20 minutes and laughed and laughed and laughed (rather than my usual reaction, which is to scream or run for cover or ... well, just change the radio station).

Rush spent that entire 20 minutes lambasting a school project some caller's young granddaughter was made to do. The project is "exactly what is wrong with America," he said, "because it teaches your granddaughter that everyone's supposed to get along, that we can all just blend together and be one happy America, and that's just ridiculous."

The project in question? The man's granddaughter was given a picture of an elephant, and a picture of a tiger, and was asked to imagine what they'd look like as one, combined creature!

Rush's problem with the Elephantiger (which the caller first pronounced in a way that sounded a little too much like a certain slur, until Rush told him "we'd better say 'tyger' unless we want certain people gettin' all angry at us) wasn't that it was an ungodly beast the kind of which Darwin might have imagined when he wrote his liberacommifascist tract about evolution. No, Rush's problem with the Elephantiger was that it implied elephants and tigers might one day get along.

"And that's what we're gonna get if we elect a John McCain," he bellowed. "These people want to get rid of the real conservatives. I don't want to reach across the aisle, I don't want to compromise, I don't like those democrat people and no one's gonna make me!" Rush also noted that the elephant was "the symbol of the Republican party" and the tiger was "well, a tiger." Then he seemed to lose his train of thought, and started ranting some more about how McCain is a pussy.

So there you have it, folks: elephants and tigers, the end of civilization as we know it.