Rush Limbaugh Is Ripping Off Mike Huckabee

Rush Limbaugh announced today that he's writing a book. It's children's book, to be precise, that will chronicle the adventures of -- stay with me here -- Rush Revere, a “fearless middle-school history teacher” who “travels back in time and experiences American history as it happens, in adventures with exceptional Americans.” Our chronotripping hero's first adventure will be to “the deck of the Mayflower,” where, I assume, he'll discover that an early draft of the Mayflower Compact inveighed against the tyranny of feminazis.

Limbaugh's book is noteworthy in that it looks like the concept is a rip-off of Mike Huckabee's Learn Our History series of children's cartoons. Rush's book will tell the story of a middle school teacher who “travels back in time and experiences American history as it happens.” Learn Our History follows the adventures of “a group of time-traveling history students who go back in time to see US history in the making.”

Limbaugh's book and Huckabee's cartoons are the most high-profile entries to date in the conservative effort to “reclaim” American history from the liberals and revisionist academics who have (allegedly) corrupted it. It's a movement that deifies the Founding Fathers and projects every aspect of the country's history through the lenses of right-wing dogma and “American exceptionalism.” Huckabee's series of cartoons are cheaply produced and bend and omit facts where needed to be as jingoistic and conservative-friendly as possible.

An early episode of Learn Our History backhandedly credits George W. Bush for hunting down Osama bin Laden. And, as you might expect, Huckabee's cartoons are blatantly propagandistic -- there's an entire episode on the “Reagan Revolution” that features a kid-friendly endorsement of Reaganonmics and the brilliance of tax cuts.

That's less “history” than it is “political indoctrination.” And given that Limbaugh has already borrowed Huckabee's concept, it's a good bet his take on history will be just as warped.