Rush Limbaugh flunks Graphic Design 101
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Hot on the the heels of the Obama-as-the-Joker poster that has mysteriously turned up on freeway walls in L.A. and on the Internet, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Thursday compared the logo of the president’s healthcare reform plan with the graphic design of Hitler’s Nazi symbol. Reproduced here, both designs are juxtaposed on Limbaugh’s website.
‘[You] will find that the Obama healthcare logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo,’ Limbaugh asserted to his listeners. ‘I’m going to show you people watching on the Dittocam this, and there you are: The middle frame is the Obama healthcare logo. At the bottom is an official Nazi logo, eagle and everything, spread wings, or bird with spread wings.’
Limbaugh also urged listeners to visit a website called ‘Sweetness & Light,’ where conservative blogger Steve Gilbert, who was involved with the swift boat veterans campaign against Vietnam War hero John Kerry in 2004, compared the two designs. Gilbert claims that the ‘similarity’ is apt because Obama is following Hitler’s Nazi plan for ‘cradle-to-grave nationalized healthcare.’
There’s just one hitch: Asserting a resemblance between the two logos is like saying Limbaugh resembles Gary Busey because both men have two eyes, a nose, a mouth and a drug addiction. Obama’s healthcare logo includes no eagle, Roman symbol of imperial authority, and it has no swastika, the bent-arm cross designed by Hitler himself as the emblem of National Socialism. Instead, the Obama design surmounts the red, white and blue landscape of his presidential campaign logo with a caduceus, the winged staff entwined with serpents that derived from the rod of Asclepius, son of Greek god Apollo. An ancient symbol of healing, the rod is often used as a medical logo. So the Obama design shows a medical symbol above the American landscape.
Make that two hitches: The claim that Nazism embraced healthcare is obscene.
So much for Graphic Design 101. No imperial eagle, no swastika, false messaging -- but other than that, darn close!
--Christopher Knight
Credit: rushlimbaugh.com
