How to be the Biggest Asshole in the World

1. Be Rush Limbaugh. Now I know what you're thinking—the instructions could stop there. And, true enough, that'll get you in the Top 10 on any day of the year, but to be top of the asshole heap, you've got to take a few extra steps.

2. Take a call from a woman who says, of leading Democratic contender for the presidential nomination and sitting US senator Barack Obama: "..my 12 year old daughter…she…her statement last week was 'who cares what the guy's middle name is, he looks like Curious George'."

3. Laugh.

4. Later apologize by saying you were only laughing to be "polite," and incredulously claim to have no idea who Curious George is.

5. Go on to undermine your own "apology" by saying: "I'm doing this as an illustration for you of how really uptight and tense everybody is going to be with any kind of criticism of Barack Obama on the Republican side. If Obama is the nominee, we may set a record for the number of apologies to him and his campaign by various Republicans and so forth."

Because, of course, people who take exception with comparing a black man to a cartoon monkey are just "really uptight and tense," failing utterly to see how that's some kind of legitimate "criticism."

Honest to Maude, if I hear one more person act like requesting the basic fucking decency of not being a racist is some kind of political correctness gone wild, I'm going to lose it, well and truly.

[Addendum: How to be the Biggest Asshole in the Galaxy—1. Be a member of the mainstream media. 2. Classify Rush's whinging about "how really uptight and tense everybody is" as "a broader, perhaps more serious observation about political correctness and what can and cannot be said about a black man seeking the presidency of the United States." Yeah, he's quite the astute cultural commentator, that Rush—a regular modern-day Mencken.]