For some reason, Rush Limbaugh's mooted purchase of a sports franchise has prompted CNN and others to distribute far and wide what appear to be
entirely fabricated racist quotes by Rush. As Tim Blair points out:
Bizarrely, nobody running these career-killing “quotes” seems to question why they weren’t of previous interest.
Just so. What's the theory here? He said these things on the air in 2006 and nobody noticed? 2001? Maybe 1995, back when Clinton was blaming him for Oklahoma City? Hey, let's not get hung up on details. Just because nobody can find any evidence anywhere of Rush saying these "quotes" doesn't mean he didn't say 'em. As someone called Jason Whitlock says:
Limbaugh doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt on racial matters.
Why not? H
e does his show every day with an off-mike black sidekick yakking in his ear (Mr. Snerdley) and he has a black guest-host (the great Walter Williams). More to the point, when I began guest-hosting for Rush, I was amazed to discover that
George Soros pays a team of stenographers, many of them called Zachary, to work their tippy-tappy fingers to the bone for three hours transcribing everything Rush or his fill-ins say in the hope that their efforts will one day be rewarded and he will deliver the big career-detonating soundbite. Among the aficionados of this service are, as I discovered recently, America's "newspaper of record," which faithfully follows the George Soros typing pool and dutifully plasters any potentially damaging bon mot on page one.
And, aside from all that, 20 million people are out there listening.
So where are these racist soundbites? Where's the audio? Where's the transcript? Name the year.Heigh-ho, say CNN's Rick Sanchez and the rest of the basement-ratings crowd. Not our problem: It's for Limbaugh to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he's never said it.
We're too busy fact-checking anti-Obama jokes to fact-check our own reporting.. .
