Poking it with a stick
Poking what? The bloated, vacuous persona of Rush Limbaugh. I gathered a nice collection of Rush bash to use for a future Sunday read [when the the vivid picture of the toad rocking back and forth in his chair, mimicking Michael J. Fox, had faded into distasteful memory] but today I discovered that our Dubby — yes, the President of these United States of America — will be joining Rush for a discussion today… betraying the status of his office … legitimizing trash radio … rousing the Ditto Heads.
Can you imagine Clinton doing a Lewinski defense on Howard Stern while still in office?
This is just freaking appalling!
So here’s a collection of Rush bash … the man who used his ass-end to keep out of Vietnam … who spent years broadcasting under a load of oxycontin that would have downed a water buffalo … who can’t keep his viagra to himself … and who continues to shame his party and work for the disintegration of the Constitution.
And Dub thinks John Kerry should apologize???
When you think of Rush you think of other folks too — Tokyo Rose … that sad and amusing Ali guy who was point man for Saddam, broadcasting that the Americans were nowhere near while you could hear the bombs in the background … Stephen Colbert who satirizes the Ditto Heads in a classy, campy version of Rush … Ann Coulter. [Actually Ann and Rush would make a fine couple, having so much in common -- the Stan and Ollie of the rabid right. They could double date with George and Laura, now that Mrs. Stepford has jumped on the "chiding Fox" bandwagon.]
I guess it’s not a stretch, in this political climate, to think that Limbaugh is somehow “legit.” Nobody tells us he isn’t! We have FOX broadcasting 24/7 and folks think it’s real news … and because they do, they think that Saddam had WMD, was responsible for the Towers and that we’re winning in Iraq [one more argument for education, dearhearts ... or, when I'm grumpy, mandatory sterilization.] The last article here is important — what IS wrong with the press that they don’t question the credentials, the intent, of a gas-bag like Rush Limbaugh … and why did it take a Canadian to point it out? How did MSM get so complacent with hate radio and the bitter, sadistic clone of Joe McCarthy that runs it?
As the boyz on South Park would say — this is some sick s__t, right here!
Jude
Rolling In The Pen With Pigs
by digby
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
George W. Bush is so desperate to get his embarrassed base out to vote that he’s appearing with extremist talk show pig Rush Limbaugh tomorrow.
That honor and dignity schtick is now so dead it stinks — they aren’t even pretending anymore. He is sullying the presidency worse than a million adulterous blojobs could ever do. Just days ago that gelatinous blowhard cruelly derided a man with Parkinson’s Disease for lowlife political purposes. And now the President of the United States is going to validate his malevolent cultural poison by appearing on his show.
Say your final good-byes to that silly Hughesian alliterative construct, “compassionate conservatism.” George W. Bush and his porcine hatchet-man are going to be smothering the last remaining vestige of it tomorrow as they wallow around together in the fetid shit pile known as the Rush Limbaugh Show.
It sure makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?
Rush Limbaugh: Stupid, Psychotic or Both?
Dr. Gerry Lower
Oct 30 2006
Rush Limbaugh’s shallow grasp of reality and poor manners came fully into public view with his assault on Michael J. Fox for suffering from Parkinson’s Disease and for backing politicians who support stem cell research. Limbaugh accused Michael of “exaggerating the effects of the disease”, “allowing his illness to be exploited,” and “shilling for a Democratic politician”.
It can be argued that Limbaugh is just a blindly self-righteous Republican, that he is overtly manipulative, and that he knows what he is doing. In this description, Limbaugh is seen as doing the acting, “faking stupidity” to promote the right wing agenda, knowing that it works with those who prefer to believe themselves right by declaring themselves as such, without so much as an intelligent, independent thought.
It can be also be argued that Limbaugh is so blindly loyal to the right wing that he is blindly stupid, to the point of psychosis, and that he does not know what he is doing. In this description, Limbaugh is seen as a habitual right wing nutcase, known to be an oxycontin drug addict with nothing to contribute to honest and meaningful discourse.
In the dialectic sense, it is highly probable that both descriptions of Limbaugh are true. He does “know” what he is doing in the sense of zealously supporting the political right wing. He does not know what he is doing in any generally-accepted sense of the term.
It can also be argued that the real problem is not with Rush Limbaugh at all. It can be argued that the real problem is the corporate media that gives this blowhole any voice at all, a press that is open to taking Limbaugh and his mindless diatribes seriously, as if they were legitimate and newsworthy.
In other words, the press is willing to abide the same prejudices and preconceptions, the same lack of empirical evidence, the same lack of logic and the same lack of good manners as Limbaugh’s thoughts and actions personify in public. The press makes no journalistic distinctions, no value judgments, and no ethical pronouncements when the message is political and in the right wing’s favor.
This intentional self-ignorance is not restricted to Rush Limbaugh and the press. It is literally characteristic of the Republican party and the entire political right wing. The concept of an objective truth applicable to all people is unknown to the political right. There is only the “truth” as seen through lying, right wing capitalistic eyes.
Limbaugh, the U.S. press and the political right wing have no grasp of Christian values whatsoever, only the values and arguments of Old Testament Roman religion that can be readily employed in self-righteous self-justification. Limbaugh is a political hack who is not being paid for his honesty and integrity and his dedication to the values of democracy. He is being paid for his deceit, his duplicity and his blindly loyal support of Bush’s mindless neoconservative agenda … no matter what it takes.
The right wing struggles in a world devoid of anything resembling objective human truth, because the objective truth seldom serves right wing purposes and goals. The right wing lives in a world devoid of historical knowledge unless that knowledge can be distorted to fit its views and agenda. The right wing lives in capitalism’s greed-driven “here and now,” where “winning” is all that matters, no matter what it takes.
In other words, the political right wing operates within the confines of a world view that has no relationships to anything natural and intelligent, no natural science, no natural history and no natural philosophy. These people are ignorant of America’s roots in the EuroAmerican enlightenment, ignorant of America’s roots in nascent Christian human rights, and ignorant of the values of American democracy in general. It is their choice.
It is important to recognize that the division between right and left in America has been in existence since before Jefferson’s day. Our Revolutionary fathers stood for the nascent Christian human rights in Jefferson’s Declaration. The Tories and pro-British merchants had little interest until after the Revolutionary war, when they stepped up to produce a Constitution that honored despotism and rule by the rich and powerful.
From the Industrial Revolution until the 1930s, the arguments that sustained democracy were between sharing and competing, between socialism and capitalism, between the values of democracy and the values of despotism. With the end of WWII, corporate capitalism eliminated socialism from the American argument to leave only “liberal” and conservative capitalism.
Over the past half decade under the Bush administration, neoconservative corporate capitalism has come into full dominion, justified with Old Testament Roman religion. It constitutes the ideological death of human rights and Jefferson’s democracy in America. It is even worse than it sounds. Psychosis comes from making stupidity into a way of life.
Rush Limbaugh stands as an icon of the entire political right wing, those who are willing to live at the mindless extreme of corporate capitalism, still thinking themselves to be citizens of a democracy, those who are willing to live under religious despotism, those who are willing to abandon human rights and the freedoms that flow therefrom, those choosing to live on the lunatic fringe.
Brain Disease
The psychosis of Rush Limbaugh
William Saletan, Slate
Friday, Oct. 27, 2006
[thanks, Nadirah]
I once had a friend who listened to Rush Limbaugh three hours a day. He was a Republican operative. He sat in my apartment, wearing headphones, while I worked. He swore that if I put on the headphones for 10 minutes, I’d be hooked. So I put them on.
Inside the headphones was another world. Everyone in this world thought the same way, except liberals, and they were only cartoon characters, to be defeated as though in a video game. In the real world, my friend was unemployed and had been staying with me, rent-free, for two months. But inside the headphones, he could laugh about welfare bums instead of pounding the pavement.
I thought about that this week when Limbaugh went after his latest target: Michael J. Fox. Fox, who has Parkinson’s disease, has been appearing in ads for candidates who support government-funded embryonic stem-cell research. The ads promote this research as a potential cure for Parkinson’s and other ailments.
On Monday, Limbaugh played one of the ads for his audience. “In this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease,” Limbaugh said of Fox. “He is moving all around and shaking. And it’s purely an act. This is the only time I have ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has. … This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting, one of the two.”
Where had Limbaugh seen Fox? “I’ve seen him on Boston Legal, I’ve seen him on a number of stand-up appearances,” said Limbaugh. He pointed to Fox’s autobiography. Fox “admits in the book that before a Senate subcommittee … he did not take his medication, for the purposes of having the ravages and the horrors of Parkinson’s disease illustrated, which was what he has done in the commercials,” Limbaugh charged.
In the book, Fox tells the story of his life in the real world—the world his body inhabited, as opposed to the make-believe world Limbaugh saw on television. Fox describes how, during “the years I spent promoting the fiction that none of this was actually happening to me,” he learned “to titrate medication so that it kicked in before an appearance or performance … I did everything I could to make sure the audience didn’t know I was sick. This, as much as anything, had, by 1998, become my ‘acting.’ ” When he came out of the Parkinson’s closet, Fox recalls, he chose “to appear before the subcommittee without medication. It seemed to me that this occasion demanded that my testimony about the effects of the disease … be seen as well as heard.”
Here we have two completely different notions of reality. Fox’s job was to portray characters in movies and on television. For him, Parkinson’s was an invasion of the fake world by the real one. The medication, designed to hide this from the audience, became part of the fiction. In going off his meds, he was dropping the act.
Limbaugh’s life story has gone the other way. His job was to explain politics, a branch of nonfiction. But for him, the fake world has overtaken the real one. He thinks reality is what’s on Boston Legal. Anything that doesn’t match this must be “acting.” If you go off your meds on purpose, you’re not revealing your symptoms. You’re “portraying” them.
Radio, television, and the Internet greased Limbaugh’s descent into fantasy. Years ago, a profile described him “holed up in his New York apartment with Chinese take-out and a stack of rented movies.” In another profile, he “complained that he has virtually no social life.” Click the video links on his Web site, and you can peer into his world. He sits in a soundproof studio. He never has to go outside.
In Limbaugh’s world, “there never was a surplus” under President Clinton. AIDS “hasn’t made that jump to the heterosexual community,” and cutting food stamps is harmless because recipients “aren’t using them.” Two years ago, Limbaugh said the minimum wage was $6 or $7 an hour. Last year, he said gas was $1.29 a gallon.
Limbaugh has particular trouble distinguishing reality from entertainment. The abuse at Abu Ghraib “looks just like anything you’d see Madonna or Britney Spears do on stage,” he told his listeners. Last month, he defended ABC’s 9/11 movie against the document on which it purported to rely: “The 9-11 Commission report, for example, says, well, some of these things didn’t happen the way they were portrayed in the movie. How do they know that?”
Last year, Limbaugh, who used a tailbone defect to get out of the Vietnam draft, accused a Democratic candidate of having served in Iraq “to pad the resume.” He charged several veterans—including former Sen. Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam—with trying “to hide their liberalism behind a military uniform … pretending to be something that they are not.” When war is just another television show, a uniform is just another costume. Liberalism is real; losing your limbs is a pretense.
Which brings us back to stem cells. Limbaugh says Fox’s ads dangle a prospect of imminent cures “that is not reality.” He’s right. But the ads convey another reality: a man dying of a disease that might be cured more quickly if the government dropped its restrictions on research funding. Limbaugh dismisses this as a “script” being followed by Fox’s “PR people” and “the entertainment media.” Script? Entertainment? This is life and death.
I have another friend. He has Parkinson’s. I’ve seen him on good days and bad days. That’s how I know Fox isn’t faking it. My friend doesn’t see the destruction of embryos as a dangerous price to pay for stem-cell research. I do. But if you worry about the embryos, you had bloody well better look into the eyes of the people dying of these diseases. You had better ask yourself whether slowing research that might save them is an acceptable price for your principles.
If you can’t—if all you can see is “acting”—then you need more help than they do. Fox’s disease can only take your body. Limbaugh’s can take your soul.
A version of this article also appears in the Outlook section of the Sunday Washington Post.
Rush Limbaugh Fakes Stupidity
You may think he’s dumb as a chair, but it’s all an act
Timothy Noah, Slate
Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2006
[open article for links]
Many people have concluded, from Rush Limbaugh’s recent disparaging comments about Michael J. Fox and Parkinson’s disease, that Limbaugh must be an utter fool. But of course that’s exactly what Rush wants you to think. Does the man’s capacity for manipulation know no bounds?
Limbaugh’s tirade was in response to a TV ad Fox appeared in for Claire McCaskill, Missouri’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate. (To view the spot, click here.) Fox also appeared in a similar ad for Sen. Ben Cardin, D.-Md. (To view that spot, click here.) Here is what Limbaugh said:
- Now, this is Michael J. Fox. He’s got Parkinson’s disease. And in this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it’s purely an act. This is the only time I have ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has. I know he’s got it and he’s raising money for it, but when I’ve seen him in public, I’ve never seen him betray any of the symptoms. But this commercial, he—he’s just all over the place. He can barely control himself. He can control himself enough to stay in the frame of the picture, and he can control himself enough to keep his eyes right on the lens, the teleprompter. But his head and shoulders are moving all over the place, and he is acting like his disease is deteriorating because Jim Talent opposes research that would help him, Michael J. Fox, get cured.
Limbaugh later retreated to the position that Fox didn’t fake the symptoms, but rather that he refrained deliberately from taking his medication, something Fox apparently did seven years ago to demonstrate the effects of the disease while testifying before Congress. It’s certainly possible that Fox once again skipped or delayed taking his meds to achieve the same goal (though Fox’s public response to Limbaugh suggests not; during a public appearance for yet another political candidate, Fox appeared steadier and said, “My pills are working really well right now”). The obvious retort to Limbaugh is: So what? Whether Fox takes his meds or doesn’t take his meds is nobody’s business but Fox’s, and there would be nothing counterfeit about Fox filming an ad unmedicated. He’s been known to twitch, OK?
Limbaugh’s continued refusal to drop the matter as more commentators become aware of his stunningly boorish remarks has inevitably led some of these commentators to conclude that Limbaugh is mentally defective. Who but an absolute moron would attack a Parkinson’s sufferer for displaying impaired muscle function?
It’s a classic trap, right out of the right-wing playbook.
Ever since the resignation of Richard Nixon, a very smart man who got caught abusing his executive power, the GOP has deliberately avoided nominating conspicuously intelligent people for president. Gerald Ford was smarter than he looked, but he was unable to dispel his buffoonish image. Ronald Reagan was famously checked out and ill-informed. George H.W. Bush, though clearly smarter than Dubya, is not exactly imposing in the brains department, and he’s demonstrated almost as much difficulty as his son in formulating a coherent sentence. And George W. Bush? Let’s just say the guy is either mentally lazy, not very bright, or some combination of these two. I’ve never felt it necessary to refine that diagnosis; the term I favor is “functionally dumb.”
Two things must be said about my assertions in the previous paragraph. One is that they are all unmistakably true. The other is that whenever a liberal repeats any one of them out loud, that liberal—and contemporary liberalism generally—come under attack, along with the Democratic party, the New York Times, Harvard, the AFL-CIO, the Council on Foreign Relations, the three major TV networks, and the Sierra Club. If a liberal is deciding whom to hire to answer phones and return papers neatly to a metal filing cabinet, it’s considered legitimate for that liberal to formulate a judgment as to the candidates’ intelligence. If a liberal is deciding whom to vote for in a presidential election, it is not. Merely to raise the issue is seen as conclusive evidence that one is snobbish and effete, and that the subject of one’s skeptical inquiry is an authentic man of the people.
Nobody knows this better than Rush Limbaugh, who has said so many idiotic things on his radio show over the years that Al Franken, a famous liberal comedian/talk-radio host, walked right into the trap by penning a book titled Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot. Which of course made Limbaugh an even bigger hero to the dittohead faithful.
I’m not saying Limbaugh isn’t a little bit stupid. I’ll give him that. But give me a break. On the subject of Fox’s Parkinson’s, he’s just all over the place making one asinine comment after another! He can barely control himself! But you’ll notice Rush can still cut to a commercial when his engineer tells him to. I’m telling you: Limbaugh’s moronic blowhard routine is purely an act.
Limbaugh is exaggerating his stupidity to advance political ends, and I find that despicable.
You think Rush Limbaugh is dumb enough to lay into a person for exhibiting symptoms of a debilitating disease? Come on. Nobody’s that dumb. You think Rush doesn’t know that over time the medications that a person takes for Parkinson’s can reduce motor control rather than increase it? Oh, please. You just have to read the papers to know that when he sets his mind to it, Limbaugh can navigate his way around the PDR very adeptly, thank you very much.
Take it from me. Rush Limbaugh wants you to think he’s a dumbass, a pea-brain, an absolute yutz. It’s a con job. Don’t fall for it.
Playing nice with Rush Limbaugh
Eric Boehlert
Nov 1 2006
Question: When is an apology not an apology?
Answer: When the press corps is covering for Rush Limbaugh.
Last week’s spectacle of right-wing talker Limbaugh mocking actor Michael J. Fox for allegedly faking the symptoms of his crippling Parkinson’s disease while appearing in a Democratic-sponsored campaign ad was equaled only by the media spectacle of news outlets erroneously, and methodically, reporting that the talker quickly apologized for his outlandish smear. Things got so bad that at one point news consumers were better off reading the Canadian press to find out the actual facts of the American-based controversy. (Fox is a native of Edmonton, which explained the Canadian interest in the story.)
And it’s not like the facts were complicated. Fox made a heartfelt plea urging voters in Missouri to support Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, who he stated “shares [his] hope for cures” through stem cell research. Limbaugh promptly belittled the actor, telling listeners the herky-jerky motions Fox was making during the commercial were a con; “purely an act” to elicit an emotional response. Limbaugh even uncorked spastic, in-studio gesticulations to mimic Fox’s awkward appearance.
Limbaugh said if he was proven wrong he’d apologized. But the press took that for an apology itself. Days later, as the controversy raged, Limbaugh was even clearer, insisting, “I stand by what I said [about Fox]. I take back none of what I said. I wouldn’t rephrase it any differently. It is what I believe. It is what I think. It is what I have found to be true.”
That quote was key to understanding the radical, remorseless position Limbaugh had staked out for himself. And here, according to a search of the Nexis database, is a list of major Canadian papers that published the direct, “I stand by what I said” quote from Limbaugh:
The Edmonton Journal, The Gazette (Montreal), the Regina Leader-Post (Saskatchewan), the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix (Saskatchewan), The Province (Vancouver, British Columbia), the Vancouver Sun (British Columbia), and the Windsor Star (Ontario)
Meanwhile, here’s a list of major American newspapers that published the same revealing quote from Limbaugh:
(Crickets)
The sounds of silence were fitting for a press corps that treated Limbaugh’s allegation as rational, manufactured a central element of the story (his ‘apology’), mischaracterized Fox’s commercial, suggested his actions had “spark[ed]” the controversy, and absolutely refused to put Limbaugh’s attack in any sort of historical context regarding the talker’s established record of hate speech.
But this is nothing new. Despite Limbaugh torrent of rhetoric about how the press vilifies him (it’s called a schtick; every radio talk show host needs one), the truth is Beltway media players routinely play nice with Limbaugh and his fringe brand of conservatism. Anxious for his right-wing seal of approval (and spooked by his liberal bias charges), the mainstream press corps has for years treated Limbaugh with undeserved respect, worked to soften his radical edges, and presented him as simply a partisan pundit.
Why else would The Washington Post equate Limbaugh to Comedy Central’s award-winning late-night satirist Jon Stewart? And why else would washingtonpost.com describe Limbaugh as a “mainstream conservative” who simply “pokes fun” at Democratic “policy” and not at individuals?
As if on cue last week, the press treated Limbaugh’s odious, left-field attack as if it were a normal part of the public discourse — naturally somebody would question whether Fox’s body contortions were part of an act. “Rush has done his job well,” blogger Jane Hamsher wrote at firedoglake.com last week. “The goalposts are suddenly moved, this is considered a legitimate line of inquiry.”
And it was key press players, such as NBC’s Matt Lauer, who dutifully helped move those goalposts. In fact, Lauer may have uttered the Quote of the Year when he painted Limbaugh as some sort of Everyman, speaking the quiet truths of most Americans:
-
LAUER: Rush Limbaugh started a lot of controversy when he said perhaps Michael J. Fox is exaggerating or faking these effects of Parkinson’s Disease in that ad promoting stem cell research. Didn’t Rush Limbaugh just say what a lot of people are privately thinking? [Emphasis added]
Lauer assumed lots of people watched Fox, who suffers from an incurable brain disorder, and figured, yeah, he’s fakin’ it.
Shelter from the storm
Unfortunately, that’s been the knee-jerk response to dealing with Limbaugh controversies, particularly in the world of network news, where the rule of thumb is to provide the powerful right-wing talker with all sorts of cover. Lauer’s former colleague Katie Couric was so anxious to make sure she got Limbaugh’s side of the Fox story last week that she personally contacted the host. Limbaugh told Couric the point he had tried to make on his program was that Fox “is stumping for Democrats in the political arena and is, therefore, open to analysis and criticism as we all are.” Of course, that was not the point Limbaugh made when he mocked Fox’s disease, but Couric pretended not to know the difference. (The only celebrity network TV host I saw who responded to Limbaugh’s off-the-chart smear the way any rationale person would ( i.e. “WTF?”) was Good Morning America’s Diane Sawyer.)
Keep in mind that last month, during her first week in the anchor chair at CBS, Couric personally contacted Limbaugh and asked him to contribute a “Free Speech” segment for her nightly newscast. “Free Speech” is where outsiders are invited to tape op-eds and is touted by CBS as a forum to restore “civil discourse.” I’m guessing Couric was aware of the multiple layers of ironies involved with including Limbaugh in a forum designed to restore “civil discourse.” I assume she and her staff understood that Limbaugh has, among an endless litany of insults, called Sen. John Kerry a “gigolo,” mocked Democratic Party chief Howard Dean as “a very sick man,” labeled liberal philanthropist George Soros a “self-hating Jew,” and announced that Democrats “hate this country.” It seems clear Couric was so anxious to have Limbaugh onboard that she didn’t much care about the uncomfortable ironies.
Couric’s not the only network anchor in recent years to genuflect before Limbaugh in search of a conservative seal of approval. Just weeks after he took over the NBC Nightly News anchor chair in late 2004, Brian Williams told a C-SPAN interviewer that he felt it was his duty to listen to Limbaugh every day and hoped that Limbaugh would get his “due” as a broadcaster.
Earlier that year, and just months after insisting, “What’s good for Al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party in this country today,” Limbaugh broke with his traditional no-guest rule and welcomed NBC Meet the Press host Tim Russert on his radio show. An appreciative Russert, out peddling a new book, said it was “an honor” to be on the program. In fact, at one point Russert playfully suggested nominating Limbaugh as the next host of Meet the Press. Limbaugh signed off the boys club chat with, “Anyway, this has been fun. I always enjoy talking to you, and I appreciate our relationship over the years.”
Make no mistake, careerism is a key element behind the media’s kid glove handling of Limbaugh. Very few Beltway press insiders want to cross him or feel the wrath of his press-hating listeners — the same listeners who helped drive Dan Rather from his job as CBS anchor following the 2004 controversy regarding CBS’ report on Bush and the Texas Air National Guard.
Read this back-and-forth between ABC News’ Ryan Owens and deputy political director David Chalian and note how nervous they were about offending the mighty Limbaugh. The program was Inside the Newsroom, which is part of ABC’s digital and broadband news service. The two were discussing the Fox/Limbaugh controversy and had just aired the shock jock’s quote about how Fox was “exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it’s purely an act”:
- OWENS: Guess what, I’m gonna stay out of this and toss it right over to you, David. What do you think?
CHALIAN: You know, as for Rush Limbaugh — I’m not gonna pick a fight with Rush Limbaugh.
OWENS: At least you try to respond, which makes you a better man than me.
Perhaps the timidity isn’t surprising considering that their boss at ABC News, Mark Halperin, the director of the networks’ political unit, is a longtime Rush admirer. “Twelve o’clock for a normal person might be ‘Let’s think about having lunch,’ but for me it’s ‘Rush Limbaugh is on,’ ” he once told a reporter. (Last week, Halperin labeled Limbaugh an “American iconic” figure.)
Keep in mind that Halperin recently agreed with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that the mainstream media have a liberal bias and that his duty at ABC is to convince conservative partisans that his news organization can be trusted. In that context, ABC’s continuously skewed coverage of Limbaugh’s ‘”apology’” begins to make sense.
ABC shifts the focus onto Michael J. Fox
For instance, ABC erroneously described the Fox stem cell ad as “tough,” insisted Fox had “blasted” Republicans, and that following Limbaugh’s attack the actor had publicly “fired back.”
None of the characterizations was accurate. Tough? The facts-only text of the ad was downright timid compared to traditional campaign mudslinging. “Blasted”? Fox simply took issue with the Republican position on embryonic stem cell research. (They largely oppose it.) “Fired back”? Fox’s initial public response to Limbaugh was almost comically reserved; a one-sentence joke about how his meds currently seemed to be working fine.
ABC News also worked overtime to shift the attention away from Limbaugh and place the onus on Fox, as the network falsely reported it was the actions of the sick actor that were “raising lots of eyebrows.” ABC insisted there was “a big debate about Michael J. Fox.” It pushed the false story that “the political backlash of the Fox ad lasted well into this week.” And ABC reported, “The bitterest political battle in the closing days of this campaign has erupted in Missouri. And it centers on Michael J. Fox.”
Let’s be clear, Fox’s commercial in and of itself when it aired in Missouri on October 21 was a non-story nationally. The real-time reaction to the ad in the press as well as by big-time conservatives was virtually nil. (Go back and check the transcripts and the clips. I did.) Without Limbaugh and his baseless, tasteless allegation, the Fox ad would have quietly come and gone, generating only minor interest. But the press, led by ABC, seemed determined to tag Fox for creating the uproar.
And then there was the botched apology reporting. There, ABC had lots of company. Here’s what Limbaugh said on October 23:
- “So I will bigly, hugely admit that I was wrong and I will apologize to Michael J. Fox, if I am wrong in characterizing his behavior on this commercial as an act.” [Emphasis added]
“That’s not an apology,” John Aravosis correctly noted on his Americablog last week. “It’s not even one of those lame ‘I apologize if you were offended’ apologies.” No matter. The media had their script — Rush apologized! — and they were sticking with it. That included news outlets such as CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Time, the Associated Press, The Kansas City Star, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the Houston Chronicle, and The Wall Street Journal, just to name a few.
Then midway through last week, Limbaugh, as if irked by the inaccurate press accounts of his so-called apology, defiantly announced “I stand by what I said.” Yet even after he erased any doubt, the press refused to adjust its preferred narrative:
“Limbaugh apologized for saying Fox was faking.” [ABC News]
“Limbaugh’s remarks caused a furor this week and prompted him to issue a rare apology.” [The Baltimore Sun]
“Limbaugh apologized later in the broadcast.” [AP]
“Rush Limbaugh apologizes.” ]National Public Radio]
“Limbaugh, who was attacked for his comments about Fox, later apologized.” [Newsday]
“Limbaugh later apologized.” [USA Today]
“Mr. Limbaugh has since apologized.” [The Washington Times]
“Limbaugh later apologized.” [Los Angeles Times]
Those press mentions of an apology all came within the 48 hours after Limbaugh pointedly refused to express any regret. Yet the media still clung to the quaint, naive notion that Limbaugh, seeing the error of his ways, said he was sorry for smearing a sick man suffering from a degenerative disease.
The press just can’t bring itself to tell the truth about Rush Limbaugh.
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
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