UPDATED 2:50 PM ET ON WEDNESDAY: Right wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh is now insisting that he wasn't proposing a giant Batman/Bane/Bain conspiracy theory on his show yesterday. POLITICO reports, today he told his listeners:
“I never said that the villain was created by the comic book character creator to be part of the 2012 campaign,” Limbaugh said, referring to Bane, who was created in 1993. “I never said that at all. And everybody’s out there running around, thinking I got this giant conspiracy.… I didn’t say there was a conspiracy. I said the Democrats were going to use it.”
Original post follows, including a transcript of what Limbaugh said yesterday. You can make the call.
Also, Rachel Maddow has responded to Limbaugh's attempt to spin this over on The Maddow Blog.
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Rush Limbaugh thinks the Obama campaign is working with Batman... no, really. Earlier today on his radio show, Limbaugh pontificated the following:
The villain in The Dark Knight Rises is named Bane, B-a-n-e. What is the name of the venture capital firm that Romney ran and around which there's now this make-believe controversy? Bain. The movie has been in the works for a long time. The release date's been known, summer 2012 for a long time. Do you think that it is accidental that the name of the really vicious fire breathing four eyed whatever it is villain in this movie is named Bane?
Let's discuss a few things here. Firstly, Bane is neither fire-breathing nor four-eyed.
You'd also have to believe that in January of 2011 when Warner Bros. announced the villains for writer/director Chris Nolan's third and final Batman film, that was actually the beginning of a plot to try and keep Mitt Romney from making it to the White House. A plot that was somehow hatched nearly five months before Mitt Romney announced he was getting into the 2012 race on June 2, 2011. Or maybe the plot really began back in 1993 when Bane made his debut as the newest Batman foe in Batman: Vengeance of Bain #1.
This sounds like a mystery perfect for the pages of Detective Comics, the 75-year-old record-breaking comic title featuring... you guessed it. Batman.
Rachel Maddow gave us a fantastic take on this story on her show, tonight.