Rush Limbaugh exposed?

I keep struggling to come up with the right metaphor to describe the call Rush Limbaugh took from “Rick from Los Angeles” yesterday. (If you haven’t heard the above segment, you should.) On one hand, it reminded me of Jack Nicholson’s You’re damn right I ordered the code red! moment in A Few Good Men. In both cases, someone else—an attorney in the movie and a talk radio caller in the Rush situation—prompted a rare moment of honesty, which turned out to be a personal indictment.

But that’s not quite right either. Nicholson’s character (Colonel Jessup) was angry at the line of questioning. Limbaugh might’ve been flummoxed by the questioning, but he wasn’t angry.

And there’s another reason the Nicholson analogy fails. As Conor Friedersdorf’s title suggests, Limbaugh’s comments demonstrate that he had misled his own audience. Conversely, Col. Jessup was willing to bullshit the civilians and a Navy lawyer, but that was, after all, for their own good. Jessup’s sense of loyalty was to his men and his country. He felt the ends justified the means.