If Bill O should demand a recount, will U.S. attorneys probe for voter fraud in his latest loss to Oxy-Rush for "Worst Person in the World" status?

Unfortunately for Bill O'Reilly, it's hard to imagine Karl Rove taking sides against Oxy-Rush Limbaugh, so perhaps he won't be willing to unleash his personally owned corps of U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud in Bill O's ongoing quest to elbow Oxy-Rush aside for the title of Top Loon.

It would be interesting to know exactly how the boys stand competitively. Probably we could get hard data from the Countdown people themselves. They must keep running totals on Keith Olbermann's daily honorees as Worse, Worser, and Worst Person in the World, wouldn't you think? Or maybe the stats supremos, the Elias Sports folks, have the numbers?

While we wait for the hard data, wouldn't we have to guess that the elite finishers--the worstest of the worst, as it were--are the most bellicose, dishonest, and shameless blabbermouths in the land, Oxy-Rush Limbaugh and Bill "Shame of the Old Sod" O'Reilly? Over the long haul, is there anyone in their class?

Where it gets interesting is the one-two ranking. Who really is the worstest of the worst?

Intuitively, you'd have to figure that Oxy-Rush has the edge. After all, he has mastered the art of yammering on for hours without saying anything that isn't both dishonest and unfairly hurtful, whereas Bill O is encumbered by fragile but apparently unseverable threads of connection to reality.

And yet there is that indefinable, even ineffable "thing" between Bill O and Keith O. You know Keith's always got Bill in his sights.

When we get the data, we can see not only who has racked up the most "Worsers" and "Worsts" (and who scores highest in a weighted-point combined total), but how often our Bill and our Rush have finished one-two, and who's come out ahead in those head-to-head clashes of the titan loons.

(Frankly, at this level of competition, I'm not sure we should even give credit for mere "Worses." Last night's, for example, went to "a jewelry thief in Brooklyn, New York--he stole thousands of dolars in gems and othe ritems frm the home of a local politician, but he left some evidence: his keys and his resume; police called the number on the resume, and the guy asked them, 'D'jew find my keys?'" See? Strictly amateur stuff.)

Now, here's "runner-up Bill O" (unfortunately without the impossible-to-reproduce layer of heavy sarcasm)--

comparing extremists on the immigration debate to the quote talk-show nuts who are telling you that they're going to nuke Tehran.

Last December 5, Bill O said, "We may have to level cities like Tehran, kill hundreds of thousands of people."

A year ago January, Bill O said, "It's a matter of time before the United States of America and Great Britain will have to bomb the country of Iran."

Hmm. [Reading.] "Talk-show nuts who are telling you that they're going to nuke Tehran." [Into camera.] First time I've ever agreed with you, Billy.

"But even worse, comedian Rush Limbaugh" (again, dripping with sarcasm)--

complaining today that the "liberal media," particularly MSNBC, never actually listens to him while he's on the air and thus gets things like his racist Al Sharpton-Barack Obama song second-hand and out of context. Of course, he admitted that he didn't see any of the criticism on MSNBC, he just read the transcripts.

I happen to know he said all this because today I was actually listening to him while he was on the air, while I was at ABC Radio in New York, where I do The Dan Patrick Show from, listening from the perfect venue, where they pipe in Comedian's show and you can't turn it off: THE TOILET.

Comedian Rush Limbaugh, today's Worst Person in the World!

Now, you can tell that Keith's heart is with the "runner-up," who after all contemplates without blinking the death-by-nuking of hundreds of thousands of Iranians, whereas Oxy-Rush is merely making fun of "liberal media," and kind of pathetically at that. (I think the transcripts tell us as much as we need to know about the context of his rants. Personally, I don't intend to get any closer to the genuine article than the occasional clips Jon Stewart shows on The Daily Show.)

But darn it all, there's Bill O fatally undercutting his claim to Top Loon by making fun of . . . of . . . well, people like himself. Can you imagine Oxy-Rush ever doing that?