This week’s sign of the apocalypse

Like Dick Cheney accusing Dems of using “scare tactics,” Tom DeLay stressing the need for ethics in government, or George W. Bush emphasizing fiscal responsibility, there are some moments of hypocrisy that just take one’s breath away. Media Matters reported yesterday on another such moment.

Rush Limbaugh, doing his show from Afghanistan last week, lectured journalism students on the importance journalistic standards, telling them, “The best thing you can learn about journalism is truth.”

“One of the first questions was, ‘How do you balance justice and truth and objectivity?’ and that was just a hanging curve ball. It was a softball. I just knocked it right out of the ballpark. I said, ‘The best thing you can learn about journalism is truth. Forget all the rest of the stuff. You’re a human being, and you have opinions. You’re an educated, learned human being; as a result, you have opinions. You have an interest in the outcome of events. Don’t try to hide that. You’d just be a phony. You’d just be a hypocrite.'”

It’s disturbing enough that Limbaugh is in Afghanistan at the request of the U.S. government, but for this blowhard, who’s become rich and infamous thanks to his years of deceptive right-wing spin, to lecture aspiring journalists about the importance of professional standards is just painful.

Just as an aside, it’s not entirely clear who’s paying for Limbaugh’s excursion to Afghanistan, but since he’s there on allegedly official business — the government has asked him to “spotlight America’s aid work” in the country — there’s a strong likelihood that all of us are picking up the tab. If that’s the case, and Limbaugh never discloses the arrangement, the circumstances will be awfully similar to those of Armstrong Williams. Hmm.