..."You Say Tomato And I Say Tohmahto......."

Old joke.

A conservative is a liberal who gets mugged.

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

For some reason I can't discern, I've been watching a lot of "conservative" talk TV this past week. Obviously, the horrific event in Arizona has brought news back to the top of my chart, knocking back to number two and/or three endless repeats of "Law and Order, ETC" and/or back to back to back episodes of "N.C.I.S.".

And I suppose that if you asked ten people who know me and/or read my work to "label" me, the consensus would be "liberal" as opposed to "conservative".

So, it might be assumed that my take on the aforementioned conservative talk TV would be a foregone conclusion.

That's the problem with "labels".

They only account for the "letter" of a law, ruling out any sense of its "spirit".

Here's my honest "take".

I like, enjoy and respect Bill O'Reilly.

I enjoy and respect Sean Hannity.

And I am pretty much okay with a variety of other Fox News-ites including, but not limited to, Bernie Goldberg, Juan Williams and Laura Ingraham.

That said...

I honestly believe that Rush Limbaugh would say "black" if "it" were white if only because any one remotely resembling a "left winger" called "it" white.

Case in point...the Barack Obama speech in Tuscon last night.

Praise and appreciation have been, arguably, universal from both sides of the political divide.

Limbaugh, meanwhile, found a variety of ways to take cheap shots, primarily with a technique we Tennesseans affectionately refer to as "picking fly shit out of pepper".

Regardless of our respective political or ideological positions, I think two facts are irrefutable:

Barack Obama is doing, right or wrong, well or badly, what he perceives to be his best effort at the job he was elected to do.

Rush Limbaugh, meanwhile, is getting rich mouthing off about that effort.

I resist the liberal label, but if wear it I must, please allow me to offer this commiseration to any "conservative" reading this piece:

There is a fair and legitimate case to be made for the "conservative" viewpoint of any and all issues.

You deserve a better advocate for your position than offered by the clearly bloated bias of Rush Limbaugh.