Radio legend Rush Limbaugh, who has had issues with his weight over the years, is now satirizing "transracial" activist Rachel Dolezal by declaring a new physical identity for himself.
"I think I'm gonna identify as skinny," Limbaugh said Tuesday. "That way I will not have to ever go on a diet."
After giving it more thought during a commercial break, the host decided to make it official: "I officially today announced that I identify as skinny. From this day going forward, I am skinny.
"Now, in the old days, people's reaction to that would be to call me delusional and maybe think I needed some help. Today, I'm brave," he continued. "It's a courageous act to identify as skinny when one is not. I'm sure I will get accolades all across Twitter and accolades all across Facebook, and accolades all across the Drive-By Media for positive thinking, now that I identify as skinny."
"And I'm fully expecting that Weight Watchers and others will identify with me and welcome me to the fold as a skinny, since I now identify that way. The way I see myself is the way I am, not how you see me, and if you don't see me that way, you're the bigot. I'm brave!"
Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, America's independent news network.
Rachel Dolezal, the now-famous former head of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP, said during a Tuesday morning "Today" interview she still identifies as a black woman, despite the fact she was born white.
Host Matt Lauer asked Dolezal directly: "Are you an African-American?"
Dolezal's answer: "I identify as black," she said.
Lauer then put up a photograph of Dolezal when she was 16 with pale white skin and blond hair and asked again about her self-identification as a black.
"I would say that visibly, she would be identified as white by people who see her," she said, speaking of herself in the third person while referring to the photo.
She also said that at the time of the photo, taken when she was 16 years old, she didn't self-identify as black. At the same time, Dolezal said she actually began to see herself as black when she was about five years old, when she selected brown rather than peach crayons to draw herself.
Lauer's question: "When did you start deceiving people and telling them you were black?"
Dolezal said she did "take exception" to that terminology, "because it's a little more complex than me identifying as black," she said.
Rather, the media actually opened the doors to the deception, she said, explaining how at first, newspapers referred to her as transracial, then biracial and finally, as black.
"I never corrected that," she admitted. "It's more complex than being true or false in that particular instance."
Lauer: Because it helped you further your career – because "it helped your meet your goals?"
Dolezal said she didn't "think that's necessarily fair."
She also addressed the matter of Albert Wilkerson, the black man she falsely identified to friends as her father. Her biological parents, Ruthanne and Larry, are white.
"He actually approached me," she said of Wilkerson, in response to Lauer's question about why she would claim a black father. "We just connected on a very intimate level, as family. Albert Wilkerson is my dad. Every man can be a father, not every man can be a dad."
Dolezal also expressed few regrets for the actions she's taken that have come to light in recent days.
"There are probably a couple interviews I would deal a little differently with," she said, "but overall, my life has been one of survival and the decisions I've made along the way ... have been to survive."
Dolezal resigned from her NAACP post earlier this week, as reported by WND, shortly after her parents outed her as white.
Earlier this month, in an apparent move to satirize former U.S. Olympic champion Bruce Jenner's transition from male to female, a caller to Limbaugh's program came out on the air as a black person trapped in a white man's body.
"I'm a little nervous 'cause I've never come out of the closet in any way before," said 38-year-old Steve from Chillicothe, Missouri.
Listen to audio of Steve's call to Rush Limbaugh:
"But I wanted you to know, be the first to know and your audience to know that I am actually an African-American. I've been an African-American my entire life. It's been bottled up inside me, and as of today, I'm no longer going to be Caucasian."
Wondering how long Steve had been trapped in his "prison," Limbaugh asked: "How old were you when you first learned that you weren't really white?"
When Steve responded, "About 10," Limbaugh then said: "Ten years old, you knew you weren't white, even though you were. You weren't white, you knew you were African-American or black. So you've lived 28 years in a prison, right? You haven't been able to be who you are?"
"Right," said Steve. "It's been horrible 'cause every day I wake up and I know I'm black and everyone around me is white, and I'm living here in flyover country and everybody in my small town is basically white."
Limbaugh empathized with the caller, noting, "This has to be hell because here you are, you're Caucasian, but you know you're black, but nobody can see that you're black, so nobody can see who you really are. ...
"You're desperate to be known for who you really are. You're not an actor. You want to be known for who you are. You know you're black, but nobody can tell it. And you go tell people you're black, and they think you're nuts, right?"
"Right," responded Steve. "I mean, I've signed up for, like, minority grants and that sort of thing, and, you know, they all just laugh at me."
"Do you hate the cops?" Limbaugh asked. "Do you have an animus against police officers?"
Steve noted: "Well, that's been building lately, as I see how other people of my color treat the cops and feel toward them, that's kind of been building in me, so, yeah."