The right-wing hate machine that was almost, but not quite, responsible for "mugging" Air America radio host Rhandi Rhodes, is off the hook, at least for now.

Rhodes was injured the other day while walking her dog. Taking a fall that left her dazed and confused, not that she wasn't already, but even more so than usual, her fellow Air American, John Elliott, was prompted to posit a conspiracy theory to explain her injury, engineered, of course, by a hate filled, right-wing cabal.

Said the ridiculously stupid Elliott:

"Is this an attempt by the right-wing hate machine to silence one of our own?" he asked on the air, according to the Talking Radio blog. "Are we threatening them?"

The right-wing hate machine was justifiably puzzled. After all, who the hell is Rhandi Rhodes? Why on earth would Cheney's minions want to silence a voice that no one had ever even heard of?

As it turns out, Elliott must have been smoking from the same bong as Rhodes before her fall.

In a retraction of his earlier comments, a Che' T-shirt wearing, and still ridiculously stupid, Elliott said:

"I shouldn't have speculated based on hearsay that Randi Rhodes had been mugged and that it may have been an attack from a right-wing hate machine," the statement said. "I apologize for jumping to conclusions."

While the whole incident was pretty embarrassing for the staff of Air America, or should have been, it did serve a useful purpose. It reminded a thouroughly disinterested America that the nation's preeminent liberal talk radio network was still on the air. Who knew?