Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Rush Limbaugh, Escape Massage, and the Stimulus

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports this morning about a brouhaha in Richmond that involves conservative talk radio, federal stimulus funds, and a massage business!

Louis Llovio has the story, here.

Evidently, Mark Steyn (a stand-in for Rush Limbaugh) read through a list of stimulus recipients during the show. I assume the idea was to show how wasteful the stimulus program is.

At any rate, Steyn mentioned Escape Massage in Richmond, which is owned by Mike Vines and George Nuckolls. Escape Massage was immediately inundated with calls (I guess the callers were expressing their anger directly at the identified businesses rather than at the government? Rather bizarre, but I assume that's what was happening), and Vines had to explain that he had actually gotten a loan from M&T Bank which is -- in fact -- guaranteed by the Small Business Administration.

According to Llovio's article, Escape is a therapeutic spa; I assume that part of Steyn's point was to imply that the business was the other kind of massage parlor - thus doubling conservative outrage.

The message board at the bottom of Llovio's article is packed with comments from readers on both sides of the Limbaugh and stimulus divides. No one has yet made the stimulus/massage parlor pun, but I'm sure it's coming.