Can’t they demonize Limbaugh without making stuff up?

OCTOBER 15, 2009

By JAMES TARANTO

On the question of who should own the hapless St. Louis Rams, we can’t say we have much of an opinion. It’s unfortunate that controversy-shy NFL owners forced Rush Limbaugh to withdraw from an investment consortium bidding for the team, but it’s hard to muster much outrage. Blogger Tom Maguire puts it in perspective: “Love him or hate him he has made fabulous living being controversial and (that awful word) divisive. That has opened some doors to him and, unsurprisingly, closed others.”

But there is a genuine outrage in the use of phony quotes to accuse Limbaugh of racism. NewsBusters.org notes that CNN and MSNBC have both attributed the following fabricated quote to Limbaugh: “I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

Another NewsBusters item quotes MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow citing this phony quote: “You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed.” Ray assassinated Martin Luther King.

According to the second NewsBusters item linked above, these quotes appear in “101 People Who Are Really Screwing America,” a 2006 book by Jack Huberman. (Disclosure: Huberman also quotes this columnist–accurately, as far as we can tell–in explaining why “The Wall Street Journal editors” are one of the “people who are really screwing America.”) A blogger who goes by the handle “Mike Smash!” tracks the James Earl Ray quote further back, to a September 2005 blog posting by one “zedlappy,” who seems to have found it on a since-edited Wikipedia page.

So what we have here is simply a slander that has become an urban legend–and one that reporters and commentators don’t bother to check because it fits their preconception of Limbaugh.

It must be conceded that this preconception is not wholly without factual basis. Race is a subject about which many Americans are highly sensitive, and Limbaugh does talk about it in ways that, depending on your point of view, are either refreshingly edgy or obnoxiously inconsiderate. MediaMutters.org has a list of quotes that it describes as “racially charged” and that, as far as we know, are accurate.

Whether because of policy or disability, however, the folks at MediaMutters do not recognize humor (when John Kerry tells them he is making a joke, they take his word for it!), so that their catalog of Limbaugh quotes fails to capture the spirit in which he uttered them and, in all likelihood, in which most of his listeners understood them. To be sure, humorous intent does not confer immunity from offense; the fake James Earl Ray quote, for instance, would still be highly objectionable even if uttered in jest.

But one cannot begin to understand Limbaugh without realizing that satire is a big part of what he does. The MediaMutters guys are beyond hope, but Limbaugh-haters who do have a sense of humor ought to spend some listening to him to see if their preconceptions are justified.

It’s been done before: In 1993, syndicated columnist William Raspberry described Limbaugh as a “bigot,” then, when he heard from readers, spent some time listening and penned a follow-up column conceding that he had been unfair:

Rush, I’m sorry.

No, I still haven’t become a Rush Limbaugh fan; I’m not that sorry. . . .

He’s smart-alecky, no question about it. He loves to rattle liberal cages. He is unrelenting in his assault on the apostles of political correctness and the militant feminists, whom he calls (as I remember it) “feminazis.” (Well, don’t some of these people make you a little uneasy?)

He is a master of ridicule. . . .

Don’t Herblock and Art Buchwald [an editorial cartoonist and humor columnist, respectively, for the Washington Post] exaggerate for effect? Of course they do. What is a caricature if not an exaggeration? Exaggeration, as every satirist understands, is the essence of humor. It’s been done better, of course. Rush and Swift are not precisely synonymous. But what prompted my earlier piece was not the quality of his satire, but its target. It’s a lot less funny when the ox being gored wears my brand.

When a caller asked me, quite reasonably, to give him an instance or two of a bigoted opinion from Limbaugh, all he got was my embarrassed silence. Sure he’s taken digs at poor people and rioters and feminists and the NAACP, but why should any of these be immune? . . .

Limbaugh’s is often (for many of us) the hated opinion, but that doesn’t, by itself, make him hateful.

No doubt some Limbaugh detractors have listened to him and come to a different conclusion. But Raspberry showed real class in acknowledging that he had erred in airing an uninformed opinion.

Those journalists who have attributed fake quotes to Limbaugh have not only done him wrong but have fallen short of the most basic professional standard. They owe Limbaugh an apology, and they owe their audience a correction.

Read at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574475150522378942.html

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