Omnivore - Iced tea story of the month

It’s summertime and you can count on the annual spate of articles about iced tea. (I’ll get to tomatoes later today.) Here is the grimmest so far: Rush Limbaugh is marketing bottled iced tea whose label features a graphic of him as Paul Revere. Says Palm Beach Post writer Frank Cerabino:

Rush Limbaugh is getting into the iced tea business, launching Two If By Tea, a soft drink that recasts the lumpy talk-show host as a modern-day Paul Revere.

“That’s me as Rush Revere sounding the warning that the liberals are coming,” Limbaugh said on his radio show last week as he pitched his new beverage.

Limbaugh didn’t mention trying to cash in on the tea party phenomenon. Instead, he said that the venture is just part of his lifelong love of tea, and his plan to show that even “in the face of the obstacles put in front of us by Pharaoh Obama,” capitalism could flourish.

I like this riff:

Not to be too nitpicky about those Rush Revere labels, but Paul Revere was a man of action during a time of war. Limbaugh’s chance for Revere-like derring-do would have been during the Vietnam war, when Limbaugh was a civilian bystander by virtue of a cyst on his rear end.

So at the very least, the Rush Revere caricature ought to be standing in the saddle.

And not to be too nitpicky again, but despite Limbaugh’s pitch about the “finest ingredients”, the label of the Two If By Tea original blend shows that its first two ingredients are water and sugar.

Patriotic sugar water. At about $2 a bottle. Drink up, tea party.