The Other (And Even More Hateful) Rush

Looking at the biographical details Erik Rush has provided about himself, one wonders: How does he make a living?

As his personal website states: "Born in New York City in 1961, from 1975 to 1985 columnist and author Erik Rush was a club, stage and studio musician. He's also been involved in biomedical research, sales, marketing and media production." None of that speaks of lucrative employment, nor does it explain how he can afford to be a WorldNetDaily columnist, which almost assuredly does not pay a living wage. Rush's books include one published by a print-on-demand house, as well as one (apparently available via a real publisher) advocating that the U.S. annex Mexico. That does not bespeak of subsistence either.

Rush's only apparent claim to fame -- as stated in the second paragraph of his bio -- is not a profitable one either (thus far, anyway): "Erik was the first to break the story of President (then Senator) Barack Obama's ties to militant Chicago preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright on a national level in February of 2007." And even then, Rush was hauling out the smears, saying on an appearance with Fox News' Sean Hannity that Wright's church was "something that you'd see in more like a cult."

Nevertheless, WND touted that as a reason for adding Rush as a regular columnist in March 2008. His column is named "The Other Rush," a feeble attempt to ride the coattails of Rush Limbaugh. But Limbaugh arguably rarely displays venomous anger to the extent Erik Rush has.

Before there was Obama to kick around, however, Rush got his start at WND looking down on rap music. A May 2003 column took an elitist view on the subject, dismissing rap as "no more a substantive or integral part of black culture than pimpery or drug addiction" and "one of the lowest forms of so-called 'art' born of a culture that labels urine-immersed religious icons and public sex acts with root vegetables as art." Rap performers are dismissed as "gesticulating, unhygienic illiterates" and "undereducated, foul-mouthed, marginally-talented thugs." He also claimed that rap comes from an urban culture where "entitlement programs and class envy are firmly entrenched," and that anyone who likes or promotes rap is "culturally impoverished."

By contrast, he writes of himself: "I started teaching myself piano when I was about six, and now play five instruments. I'm currently working on the sixth." Indeed, he paints himself as a failed former professional musician pretending that he had too much integrity to make it in the biz: "Years later, as a semi-professional musician frustrated with the degree to which I perceived I would have to compromise my artistic integrity to avoid living in a Maytag box while working in the music industry, I made a passing – but prophetic – comment to a bandmate: 'Before you know it, people are going to be making millions spouting that foul-mouthed crap we used to hear out on the stoop – and we'll still be trying to get our foot in the door.'" Bitter much, Erik?

Rush also liked to hurl Nazi smears, such as in a December 2005 column likening those to criticized the idea of a "war on Christmas" -- press release-generated though it might be -- to Holocaust deniers and Nazis: "To me, that sounds a lot like the pre-World War II assertions that the Jews were the name of Germany's pain and the postwar contention that the Holocaust was a Zionist fabrication." Rush added: "Yet the incremental attainment of power on the part of the Nazis in Germany, their duplicity and their denials during their early days parallels the actions of the Left in recent years to a chilling degree, particularly concerning their vociferous denials with respect to attacks on Christianity."

Rush brings that same spirit of bitterness and denigration to his attacks on Obama. From a Feb. 5 WND column:

Having Barack Obama as our first black president is analogous to Dennis Rodman having been America's first black basketball player. No one can deny Mr. Rodman's credentials as an outstanding basketball player, unless one is a mental deficient. However, no one can deny that he is also a skanky creep, unless one is a mental deficient bereft of any character whatsoever.

[...]

Then, this pretentious clown (and I mean that in the most Ringling Brothers sort of way) publicly ripped into corporate executives for the economic problems the world is facing to perpetuate the myth that they are responsible, when he knows – he knows – that the Barney Frank and Chris Dodd (the only senator to take more from Fannie Mae than Obama himself) contingent in Congress actually brought it all about. It is his own party that gingerly and eagerly flicked the first domino with its augmentation of the Community Reinvestment Act.

To the informed, this is not a matter of giving a new president the benefit of the doubt to see if he'll "make good" and "do what's right" for America. The informed have known since 2007 (if not earlier) that Barack Obama is the worst of the Democratic left, a practiced liar and a Marxist.

[...]

This national Obamagasm is like an episode of "The Twilight Zone" or "Star Trek" (the original): Only one, or perhaps a select few, recognize the monster for what it is; everyone else is either oblivious, or somehow paying slavish deference to it. By the time it is unmasked, the damage it has done is incalculable.

Oh, but Rush's Obama-hate is just getting warmed up.

After a March 5 column in which asserted that "President (I use the term loosely) Barack Obama was voted in by guilted whites and brainwashed blacks. He might even be an illegal alien," Rush followed up on March 12 by likening Obama to a rapist:

Despite the evidence that Obama was a closet communist, at this point I presumed he'd have settled into being something slightly more to the left than Bill Clinton and work his evil incrementally.

[...]

Indeed – like the proverbial cellblock rapist, our president is "ramming" as much of his Marxist agenda down our collective throats as quickly as he can. One would think he fears that someone might come around the corner at any second and catch him.

Rush also has a habit of embracing paranoid conspiracy theories. He used his March 26 column to promote the idea that Obama "is going to great lengths to ruin us on purpose," adding: "It could be that President Obama, rather than comparing himself to FDR or Lincoln, as others are wont to do, likens himself to George Washington – or perhaps Vladimir Lenin."

And it goes on: