Guess which program this is supposed to describe?

This is a program about uplifting people, about inspiring people, about motivating people. This is a program about good cheer. This is a program about being better than you can be, being better than you think you can be, and how to accomplish it. This program on balance over the course of many, many years of service to America has been an inspiration to people.

No, it’s not “Touched by an Angel” or “Lamp Unto My Feet.” It’s the Rush Limbaugh show!

Anyway, Rush used that as an intro to discuss how the left is angry, mean, and intolerant, while the conservatives are all sweetness and right. This is demonstrated by the fact that some folks on the left weren’t fans of Laura Bush’s stand-up routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner, while the right (except for some uptight spinsters like Michelle Malkin and the people of faith from the Coalition for Traditional Values) all found it both hilarious and perfectly charming.

Here’s Rush (his site calls this segment “New York Times Reflects Left’s Anger” :

When you read the New York Times Letters to the Editor today, and I’ll tell you, the epicenter of liberal anger is the New York Times and if you want to find out just how angry and mad and disjointed the liberals are, read the New York Times every day.

Rush confides that he doesn’t normally read the NY Times (”The last thing I want to do is read the New York Times. That’s like listening to a liberal talk show that actually has an audience which you can’t find”), but he says that if YOU want to learn about liberal anger and disjointedness, then you should read it every day. Of course, then you might learn about reality and stuff, and wouldn’t be a dittohead anymore — so on second thought, don’t read it every day.

Rush then reads the four letters to the editor the Times published about Laura’s talk.

To the editor: Laura Bush made a room full of self-important media oligarchs twitter at her scripted jokes but not even her soft porn act can reverse her husband’s growing policy failures and his falling poll numbers. James Day, Berkeley, California.

Editor, if the Bushes are not yahoos or religious zealots then their use of religious zealotry to consolidate power is all the more cynical and shameless. Laura Bush may think she’s only being funny but some of us think she’s a hypocrite and even further exposing the true agenda of the Bush administration which is to do harm and apparently enjoy it, signed Jane Smiley, Carmel Valley, California.

Editor, I suggest that Laura Bush wake her husband up around 9:30 p.m. and travel around and look at the folks in the country working the second and third shifts at their second and third jobs in an attempt to make ends meet. The Bushes are so out of touch with reality and the working class, we’re the ones that are desperate, desperate for decent jobs, desperate for affordable health insurance and housing, I don’t think Chippendale’s can help this desperation. Debbie Twyford Morrow, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Editor, desperate White House wife episode one, the ranch hand. How ironic that an attempt to humanize this presidency with some informal humor had to be written by a long time Washington speechwriter and required several days of rehearsal. Ilya Shochter, Princeton, New Jersey.

So, the four letter writers are basically saying that they didn’t find Laura’s act particularly amusing, what with the crummy job her husband is doing as President and all. But Rush interprets this as near homicidal rage.

Now, what is the problem with these people? Why such rage?

Well, like I said, they didn’t seem enraged to me, but as to what their problem is, well, they pretty much outlined it in their letters: they don’t like how President Bush is doing his job. (Rush later describes the letters as “seething, raging, angry New York Times letters to the editor today that are all just mad as hell at Mrs. Bush.” You know, because she was so funny, and they are so humor-empaired.)

You know, if I was attracting this kind of anger, if you people were filled with rage, if everybody in my audience was nothing but a bunch of spitting, seething, raging nincompoop, irrational idiots, I might be mad, too. But as you know, my friends, I’m the happiest and most optimistic figure in American media.

Yeah, Rush’s audience is well known for its mellowness and rationality. And Rush had three marriages fail and became addicted to opiates because he is so happy and optimistic.

(Okay, when pinned down by someone who notes his lapses from truth, Rush claims that he is just an “entertainer” — and since he is obviously lying here, I guess that means that he’s just being “entertaining.” But if he can entertain by bashing liberals, I think I should be allowed to entertain by poking good natured fun at his screwed-up life.)

But on to Rush’s solution for liberal rage:

So I have a suggestion, maybe a possible cure for the editors and these letter writers at the New York Times. Each writer and each editor should be required to read all these letters out loud but substitute the word Clinton for the word Bush. I will illustrate with just one choice.

Hillary Clinton made a room full of self-important media oligarchs twitter at her scripted jokes but not even her soft porn act can reverse her husband’s growing policy failures and Bill Clinton’s falling polling numbers.

Read it out loud, substitute the word Clinton for the word Bush. This is just a little bit of anger management. Seems to me the left has got some anger mismanagement.

Sounds like an idea to me! But to test it out, we’ll use a couple of posts from recent FreeRepublic threads about Hillary (not only because such threads are so easy to find, but because most Freepers seem to be Rush fans, and therefore rational geniuses), and substitute the word Clinton for Bush. (User names changed to avoid embarrassing anybody):

The Bushes are dedicated, evil criminals that are obsessed with political power. They have already proven they will DO ANYTHING TO ANYONE, OR SAY ANYTHING ABOUT ANYONE, AT ANY COST TO THIS COUNTRY, for the sake of political power. But the mindless Kool-Aid drinking populus that keeps voting for these reprobates are only perpetuating their gross existence. Let us hope the Democrats launch an all-out effort to put the last torpedo into this dispicable ship and send it to the bottom. By BeagleUSA

Threads like these tax my ability to comment on Laura Bush. We all know she’s a pimple on the ass of politics. A bolshevik power mad lunatic feminist lesbian librarian ball crushing man hater who reviles her own country and its institutions . By SpaceCase

Laura Braun Bush…she sounds like just what she is, a warmed-over, superannuated 1970s post-adolescent in a state of permanent arrested development. Still shrieking and shrilling, sounding like Hitler on a rant. It difficult to understand what she’s saying, but that doesn’t seem to matter. The mobs swoon. By ArmyGuy.

Yeah, I think will help the readers and editors of FreeRepublic to manage their rage, and may also help them to see that Rush is full of crap when he claims that it’s the left that is full of rage (and most other times too).

Anyway, in the next segment, Rush takes a call from a listener who HAS to be putting him on. This caller claims to have been offended by Laura’s act because (a) Laura made fun of her husband, the President of the United States; and (b) because homosexuals would be turned on by her horse joke. (”He’s touching the genitals of a horse, I mean, come on. That is just sick. And I bet a lot of the homosexuals are getting off on that .”)

Here’s part of the conversation between Rush and the Church Lady:

RUSH: Some people are walking around just hoping to be offended. I mean, they spend their lives wanting to be. I’m not accusing you of that. I think what you have to understand, if it offended you it offended you, but I have a theory about being offended, and it’s a new theory that I —

CALLER: It’s not like anyone said that. That was his wife. Why would his wife do that? That was his wife.

RUSH: Oh, that’s mild. I would love to have had some wives only say that kind of –

Yeah, I’m sure Rush’s former wives said a LOT worse than that about him.

Anyway, Rush then explains his theory that some people walk around hoping to be offended by stuff, and how they should just let things go.

RUSH: Well, I think, look, if it offended you it offended you. I have this whole theory about being offended, and it’s something that I have evolved over the years. And it comes from this. We have a whole group of people in this country who are walking around now professing to be offended, and that’s fine, be offended all you want but keep it to yourself. What is happening is The Offended, capital T, capital O, are now attempting to silence anybody who says or does anything that offends them and that’s not the role. If you are offended your role is to avoid it or to not be affected by it, put up a boundary.

Yes, per Rush, if you are offended by something, then you should just avoid it, or not be affected by it.

And here’s an example of Rush practicing what he preaches. (This recap of Rush’s remarks is taken from a Frank Rich column from a few months back):

Rush Limbaugh, taking a break from the legal deliberations of his drug rap and third divorce, set the hysterical tone. “I was stunned!” he told his listeners. “I literally could not believe what I had seen. … At various places on the Net you can see the video of this, and she’s buck naked, folks. I mean when they dropped the towel she’s naked. You see enough of her back and rear end to know that she was naked. There’s no frontal nudity in the thing, but I mean you don’t need that. …I mean, there are some guys with their kids that sit down to watch ‘Monday Night Football.’ ”

Of course, Ms. Sheridan wasn’t buck naked in that promo for “Desperate Housewives” (all you saw in the ad was her bare upper back). Did Rush urge his listeners to complain to the FCC about the shocking ad which featured a buck naked woman, or did he counsel them to just put up a boundry so they wouldn’t be affected by it?

Since I can’t find a transcript of the program, I don’t know — but I kinda doubt that his theory about not keeping offense to yourself applies to the things that his hardcore audience is offended by.