So Nashville just put on a festival called The Celebration of Cultures. For a city its size and reputation (middle-sized city and country music extravaganza), it was a very satisfying celebration of every international portion of the city. From the Indian restaurants to the Mongolian restaurant down on 4th Avenue, to Chinese buffets, to Japanese sushi bars, to Mexican tacquerias.

It was a great time, with plenty of world music, food, and, yes, my friends, hats. And, even better, it was free. Set in front of Nashville’s facsimile of the Parthenon, you got a sense of how, exactly, Nashville’s setting its sights on being more than the home of country music. (If nothing else, attracting more people to the city to get some more money to pay for the flood damage that the city’s still working on. Speaking of which, come visit Nashville! There are some really good bars here!)

So, as you’re probably guessing, I went to the festival. Brad was volunteering at the Japan booth, so I popped by, said hi, got some really good tikka masala, and wandered around for a good long time. Heard some pretty good music ranging from Creole jazz to Bulgarian folk; saw some creepy old people dancing like geriatric Jews at a wedding; smelled the smells of gyros everywhere, and watched as dogs tried to dash madly at dropped food.

And then, as I walked around in my straw Jamaican hat getting dirty looks from people, I got a Horrible Idea. Originally, I thought of it as “How to Enrage People,” but then decided, screw it, I’d take a potshot at Limbaugh. Brad wondered why I kept picking on Republicans. I responded that I don’t pick on Republicans, I pick on idiots; a great number of which happen to be in the Republican Party. Anyway, without further ado, save being after the jump, I present you with a choice selection of what would go through Rush Limbaugh’s mind if he went through Nashville’s Celebration of Cultures.

At the Kurdistan booth: “Hey, look, Mountain Turks!”

At the Mexico booth: “Don’t you already have enough of our country?”

At the Japan booth: “Where’s information on ritual suicide?”

The May Pole:”…Why?”

China: “I saw the Tibetan booth over that way. Want to go kick some ass?”

At the Jamaica booth: [I was going to have something fantastically witty, but the joke wrote itself. Everything was plastered with pictures of Bob Marley.]

At the Tibet booth: “Don’t you think it’s time to elect a new Dalai Lama? Current one’s not doing much for national security.

Tennessee Office for Refugees: “Come on, we both know they’re just running from doing an honest day’s work.

Directed to a woman wearing assless chaps, white panties, black fishnets, a white feather boa, and a white cowboy hat: “Ah, you must be the delegate from Whorevania.”

Image source here and here.