Save for big election seasons where everyone is doing a piece on the branding of campaigns past and present, very rare is the day that politics steps into our turf. But so it is and doing the stepping was none other than Rush Limbaugh late last week. The radio show host, quoting an entry on a blog run by Steve Gilbert, asked if Barack Obama's new logo for his "Organizing for Health Care" project didn't look an awful lot like the Nazi's branding, in particular the logo with the eagle carrying the swastika. This was complete with a detailed analysis of why the two were so "damn close." Fortunately, the LA Times' art critic Christopher Knight was there to step up to the plate and swat down this so-absurd-it's-sadly-funny piece of illiterate design comparison:

There's just one hitch: Asserting a resemblance between the two logos is like saying Limbaugh resembles Gary Busey because both men have two eyes, a nose, a mouth and a drug addiction. Obama's healthcare logo includes no eagle, Roman symbol of imperial authority, and it has no swastika, the bent-arm cross designed by Hitler himself as the emblem of National Socialism. Instead, the Obama design surmounts the red, white and blue landscape of his presidential campaign logo with a caduceus, the winged staff entwined with serpents that derived from the rod of Asclepius, son of Greek god Apollo. An ancient symbol of healing, the rod is often used as a medical logo. So the Obama design shows a medical symbol above the American landscape.

Make that two hitches: The claim that Nazism embraced healthcare is obscene.