NICK GILLESPIE: It’s Like Totally Different When a Liberal Blowhard Guy Calls a Conservative Woman a Twat!

But if Noah’s catalog of rancid liberal misogyny is incomplete, is he right that Fluke isn’t a public figure and hence not fair game? She’s not as famous or all growed up as, say Hillary Clinton or Laura Ingraham (“a right-wing slut” according to MSNBC populist Ed Schultz), but even Noah notes that she’s a political activist. But that’s besides the point: How does being, I don’t know, a syndicated columnist such as Michelle Malkin, make it less fucked up that Matt Taibbi wants to put “a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth”? The point isn’t that Rush Limbaugh is a bigger tool than liberals who resort to sad-sack sexist japes. It’s that there’s something seriously fucked up with all of that sort of thing. Especially when you’re pretending to be serious thinkers or writers or commentators.

Noah’s second reason for why Limbaugh needs to be held to a different standard is also odd: El Rushbo has more divisions than the Pope when it comes to commanding a Dittohead Army or something. If asked about it, any pol should dismiss such dumb comments, as should listeners. What exactly that has to do with, say NPR favorite Marc Maron’s comments about hate-fucking Michelle Bachmann, I don’t know.

If you’ve ever needed a reason to rethink dumb attachments to the left-right, liberal-conservative Manicheanism at the heart of conventional politics, the sort of idiotic Team Red vs. Team Blue mentality underscored by Noah’s need to exonerate the misogyny of his ideological allies should give you something to ponder.

Or, you know, ignore.