Rush Limbaugh and the Worst Case of OIP Derangement Syndrome

Rush Limbaugh’s mind is already a swill of racism and pharmaceuticals, but even he surprised rational observers with his comments on the Cleveland kidnapping case this week:

Three women missing nine plus years, found alive, all [sic] were teenagers when they disappeared. Does anybody know yet why? Has the story advanced yet? Three brothers [two since released]...have been arrested in Cleveland, which voted Obama. Not that that has anything to do with anything. One of who has a baby. Double welfare benefits if one of the women has a baby. No, I don’t know. Fascinating that the same thing happened on Hawaii 5-0, and I guarantee you people watch it. It happened on TV. It is for real.

Even Limbaugh had to acknowledge that there was no good reason for him to add the phrase “which voted Obama.” But he did it anyway, because that’s how OIP Derangement Syndrome works at its worst. These women were kidnapped during the first term of the Bush-Cheney adminstration. The man who victimized them has nothing to do with President Barack Obama. But Limbaugh’s mind needs to link everything bad to Obama.

As for Limbaugh’s comment on “double welfare benefits,” anyone not deranged would immediately understand that a criminal who’s kidnapped a woman, forced her to have his child, and kept them imprisoned inside for a decade would seek to hide that child from government authorities. Evidently Limbaugh had recently seen a fictional television program, Hawaii 5-0, which showed a different scenario: people kidnapping young children to collect welfare benefits and then killing them. And his mind linked this TV show to the crimes that occurred years before.

It’s not too hard to realize what twisted Limbaugh’s thought processes so vilely. Two heroes of this horrible case were men from the impoverished neighborhood where it happened, Angel Cordero and Charles Ramsey. They helped one woman escape from the house and summoned the police. Limbaugh couldn’t have missed the television footage of Ramsey speaking frankly: “I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms.” He may also have seen the interviews with Cordero conducted in Spanish.

Limbaugh’s mind therefore faced these facts:

• beneficent behavior by poor men of color.
• one of them a Spanish-speaking immigrant.
• the other an African-American reminding viewers of lingering racism in America.

Limbaugh’s lizard brain reacted negatively to what he didn’t like seeing, so he had to find something wrong with the situation. Fictional welfare fraud! A link to President Obama! Anything!