Somali pirates, U.S. crew, Rush Limbaugh, and Barack Obama.

I was listening to the beginning of the Rush Limbaugh show as I was cooking lunch this morning, and he was going on about the U.S. crew that was taken hostage by pirates off the cost of Somalia today. He'd slotted the story into his Obama-doesn't-know-what-to-do template and was riffing away about Obama's indecision and what he must be fretting about and how he'd probably want to apologize to the pirates and so forth. The big show was steaming along. (I thought a good ending would be: hostage crisis... it's Jimmy Carter all over again.)

And then he was slipped the news that the U.S. crew had taken their ship back, defeated the pirates. And Rush should have turned that big show around instantly. It should have been: Yay, America! Americans don't lie back and wait to be rescued. We're ready to fight. We're self-reliant. The government isn't the answer to everything. There were lots of great alternate Rush Limbaugh templates to mobilize right then. This is why we need to have our own guns. This is why the bitching about Bush after Katrina was all wrong. Etc. etc.

But Rush couldn't turn that big show — that big container ship — around. He couldn't let go of Obama doesn't know what to do, and I felt a little sad about my radio hero.

Come on, Rush, be agile! I thought you knew how to do that. Eh, enough about Rush, I want to celebrate the American crew. Go America. And to the rest of the world: Look on and admire. Learn something.