John K. Wilson (Obamapolitics, 10/16/09) on Rush Limbaugh and fake quotes:

When it came to people repeating false quotes about Limbaugh that Limbaugh himself had never bothered to deny, Limbaugh was outraged: "we are in the process behind the scenes working to get apologies and retractions with the force of legal action against every journalist who has published these entirely fabricated quotes about me, slavery, and James Earl Ray."

But when it came to his own false quotes, Limbaugh has been entirely indifferent to fake quotes.

In one of his books, Limbaugh claimed to be quoting James Madison: "We have staked the future upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." The quote was a fake. Limbaugh admitted: "The quote is not Madison's. But the misattribution of this statement (an error, not 'a lie') has been made by many over the years."

Ah, so when Limbaugh was publishing fake quotes, it was "an error, not 'a lie,'" and it was excused because the mistake was made "by many over the years."

On April 27, 1995, Limbaugh read examples of "liberal hate speech" by Pacifica radio host Julianne Malveaux and CBS reporter Eric Engberg from the right-wing Media Research Center's newsletter, unaware that he was reading fake quotes from the April Fool's edition published almost a month earlier. The next day (4/28/95), Limbaugh admitted the quotes were false, but he heroically refused to apologize to the journalists he had falsely smeared: "Given some of the things liberals actually do say, it's not too tough to believe they would say the things Bozell makes up." Limbaugh's error was even more amazing because he had made the exact same mistake of reading the newsletter’s fake quotes as if they were real one year before (Extra!, 7-8/94).

"Rush the Racist?" is the headline over a commentary written by retired NFL receiver Keenan McCardell on the Washington Post's sports blog, the League--and the question many football fans might ask upon hearing the news that Rush Limbaugh is bidding to become co-owner of the St. Louis Rams.

That's because Limbaugh has a long record of making racist remarks. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed written by FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and myself, we documented many instances of Limbaugh's racism, including his admission that he once told a black caller to "take that bone out of your nose," his assertion that "all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson," and his advice to a group with a 90-year commitment to nonviolence: "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."

Last year Limbaugh referred to Barack Obama as "the little black man-child." This past January, while discussing Barack Obama with Sean Hannity on Fox, Limbaugh said, "We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president."

So the prospect of Limbaugh owning a team in a league where nearly two-thirds of the players are African-American should be natural media buzz generator. As CBSSports.com's Mike Freeman wrote under the headline "NFL's Greatest Nightmare," "sometimes these column thingies write themselves." (Unfortunately, Freeman's column, also posted on the Washington Post's League blog, repeated an alleged Limbaugh quote about the merits of slavery that is unverified.)

Perhaps Limbaugh’s most notable remark in the St. Louis context was his 1994 response to learning from a caller to his show that St. Louis would be extending a light rail system into East St. Louis--a community of some 40,000 residents, almost all of whom are black. Said Rush (The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error, New Press, 1995): "They got a light rail system to East St. Louis where nobody goes?"

Reporters might ask East St. Louis residents what they think about the prospect of Rush Limbaugh owning their local football team.

On his Media Citizen blog, Free Press' Timothy Karr (9/17/09) has compiled some astounding Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs quotes propounding a "fear that's laced with paranoia, stoked by misinformation and prejudice and fed to millions of people via powerful media"--namely that "the most anti-American notion of the lot is the idea that we need to reform the media itself":

While Beck and his ilk want to portray diversity and localism as a dangerous conspiracy to censor, the fact remains that these ideas have been staples of communications policy since the beginning. The central mandate of the Federal Communications Commission--as enshrined in the Communications Act of 1934--is to promote localism, diversity and competition in the media. This same principle of localism has been a rallying cry for several generations of true conservatives.

Broadcasters get hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of subsidies and the right to use our airwaves in exchange for a basic commitment to be responsive to the interests of local communities.

Moreover, the Supreme Court recognized that "safeguarding the public's right to receive a diversity of views and information over the airwaves is ... an integral component of the FCC's mission."

Sadly, the FCC has failed to live up to this standard.

"What mainstream media's fear-merchants are most afraid of," writes Karr, "is not censorship, but an FCC that actually does its job--creating more opportunities for people like you and me to participate in media."

See the FAIR publication Extra! Update: "The Great Spectrum Giveaway" (10/95) by Jim Naureckas.

Former President Jimmy Carter's statement (NBC, 9/15/09)  that "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American," has generated widespread discussion in the corporate media. But few of the many analyses of Carter's remarks give you much of a sense of why one might think that many of Obama's foes are motivated by racism.

No one can look into another person's heart, of course. But many of Obama's most prominent critics have talked enough about the president and race to provide plenty of evidence about where they're coming from.  And no one has been more revealing of their inner demons than Rush Limbaugh; who can forget this classic too-much-information rant?

We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president.

Strikingly, the same day Carter made his supposedly controversial comments about racism and Obama critics, Limbaugh (9/15/09) was engaged in all-out race-baiting over a schoolbus fight that was initially reported as a racial incident:

It's Obama's America, is it not? Obama's America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety, but in Obama's America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, "Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on," and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he's white.

If that's not an expression of a racial animus, what would qualify?  Why is it more controversial to criticize people who issue hateful rants like this than it is to make them in the first place?

Media Matters research director Jeremy Schulman (8/12/09) writes that "Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs have used their radio and television shows to incite hatred and push wild conspiracy theories, leading several of Beck's advertisers to reportedly pull out of his broadcasts"--one of the hazards inherent in for-profit media.

But "many advertisers have nonetheless sponsored these hosts' hate speech in recent weeks, including major corporations and organizations that, in 2006, reportedly requested that ABC Radio Networks not air their advertisements during any Air America programs":

At the time,

ABC subsequently provided a statement to Media Matters, which read: "It is not uncommon for advertisers and/or agencies to request that their ads run or not run in specific programming environments or dayparts. ABC Radio Networks does not solicit nor encourage these requests from advertisers. If a request is made by an advertiser and /or agency we make our best effort to comply."...

The New York Times reported at the time that "the advertisers' avoidance of Air America's liberal programming seems pointed when contrasted with the commercial success of right-wing talk radio programs like those of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity." [New York Times, 11/6/06]

Indeed, Schulman tells us how, "despite their appearance on ABC's Air America 'blackout' list in 2006, a number of those same advertisers have recently run ads during broadcasts of one or more of the following: Limbaugh's radio show, Beck's Fox News show, Beck's radio show, Dobbs' CNN show and Dobbs' radio show." He then provides for your perusal a handy list of said advertisers, including--no surprise--General Electric.

Glenn Greenwald has responded via his regular Salon feature (8/6/09, ad-viewing required) to Rush Limbaugh, "speaking to his audience of 15 million, compar[ing] Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler and Nancy Pelosi to Nazi leaders," by asking you to instead

compare (a) the way that a single anonymous person's comparison of Bush and Hitler swamped our political discourse and forever altered the image of MoveOn with (b) what the (non)-reaction will be to the identical comparison coming from the leader of the Republican Party who spouts his hate-mongering to an audience of 15 million people. Within that comparison one finds many central truths about how our political debates and media discussions function.

Looking beyond how corporate media pilloried Democratic activist group MoveOn over user-submitted (and never-published) video, Greenwald gives a maddeningly extensive history of corporate media compliance with right-wingers' Nazi smears, and simultaneous reprobation of even spurious such instances from the left.

See the FAIR Action Alert: "When Are Nazi Comparisons Deplorable?: For Fox News, Only When Republicans Are the Target" (1/16/04).

Progressive critic Dr. Roberto Rodriguez has a new commentary (New America Media, 6/2/09) demonstrating how the miserable press reaction to Judge Sonia Sotomayor's U.S. Supreme Court "nomination clearly shows us is that what this nation needs is more incisive journalism, not less." But, Rodriguez laments, "to be sure, the rise of right-wing media, which include Fox News and virtually all the known right-wing radio talkshow hosts, is the antithesis of journalism":

Their coverage of the Sotomayor nomination points to the need for honest debate, not simply on the issues of race, but on the right wing's aversion to truth. It also points to the right wing's pompous beliefs, on every topic, including affirmative action, that their positions are "American."

Extremist politicos Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo, both of whom have zero credibility but are stars of right-wing media, have led the charge that Sotomayor is a racist. They have been joined by the usual wingnuts: Rush Limbaugh, Gordon Liddy, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, to name a few. Even Juan Williams of NPR, has parroted the claim that Sotomayor's (out-of-context) statements are racist. The fact that the nation’s discussion centers on whether she is a racist or not--or that she is an "affirmative action" pick (Buchanan)--points to both the power of the wingnuts and also to the virtual impotence, or complicity, of mainstream media.

While "these pundits who daily rant against 'illegal aliens,' and who daily clamor on the need to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border, are quoted as credible sources by the mainstream press," Rodriguez remains hopeful that "the majority of Americans can see through the false arguments...by these so-called patriots." Yet "this does not hold true for the mainstream media. As we are seeing with Sotomayor, all it takes is a handful of 'extremists' to control and shape the media debate."

CBS anchor Bob Schieffer was profiled by Marketwatch, where we learn:

But don't get the false impression that Schieffer is a pushover for his important guests. When I asked him how he feels when subjects lie to him on the air or try to mislead the audience, he got right to the point.

"I want to jump across the table and choke them," he said.

Wow. First of all, this Marketwatch piece is largely about Schieffer's recent interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney. The irony is almost too much; as Colin Powell's former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson put it to Rachel Maddow:

This is the man who, after all, said we know with absolutely certainty Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.  We know he has an active nuclear program.  We know he has contacts with Al-Qaeda.  This is the man who told more lies from a public pulpit than almost anyone else I know.

For the record, Schieffer did not choke Dick Cheney when he appeared on Face the Nation. He did seem weirdly proud of the interview, primarily because when he asked Cheney if he'd prefer Rush Limbaugh or Colin Powell's vision for the GOP, Cheney (totally unsurprisingly) picked Limbaugh. "I've never done anything that had as much resonance," says Schieffer.

Beyond that-- when it comes to misleading an audience, what about Schieffer's record?

--CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer announced (2/9/06) that "for the first time President Bush confirmed today that in the months after 9/11, the government broke up another terrorist plot to fly a plane into the tallest building in Los Angeles." The fact that Bush says something does not "confirm" that what he is saying is true--and, in fact, earlier reporting by the Los Angeles Times casts doubts on Bush's claims. (FAIR Media Advisory, 2/13/06)

--CBS's Bob Schieffer (12/8/02) remarked of an earlier disavowal of banned weaponry by Hussein, "Saddam Hussein says he has no weapons of mass destruction, but should we believe him?" Schieffer asked a visiting senator on Face the Nation what would happen if U.S. experts "conclude that Saddam Hussein is once again lying, as he has so often in the past.claiming he doesn't have the weapons, when in fact we know that he has." (FAIR Action Alert, 2/1/08)

--CBS anchor Bob Schieffer asserted (6/6/04), "You could hate his policies, but it was hard not to like Ronald Reagan." But Reagan's "likeability" numbers did not score much higher than other modern presidents, including Jimmy Carter. (FAIR Media Advisory, 6/9/04)

Political Animal's Steve Benen (5/12/09) notes a recent Rush Limbaugh broadcast (5/11/09) that makes the racist subtext of the right's critique of Barack Obama virtually explicit:

The [economic] deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps. But in the Oval Office of the White House none of this is a problem. This is the objective. The objective is unemployment. The objective is more food stamp benefits. The objective is more unemployment benefits. The objective is an expanding welfare state. And the objective is to take the nation's wealth and return to it to the nation's, quote, "rightful owners." Think reparations. Think forced reparations here if you want to understand what actually is going on.

So Limbaugh thinks Obama is intentionally creating unemployment in order to boost food stamps, unemployment and welfare as a form of "forced reparations"; he's wrecking the economy, in other words, in order to benefit black people.  If Limbaugh is the voice of opposition to Obama, no wonder that opposition is so concentrated in the states of the old Confederacy.

In his op-ed "Take the Limbaugh Challenge," (L.A. Times, 3/29/09), conservative writer Andrew Klavan states as a "certainty" that L.A. Times readers don't listen to Rush Limbaugh's show:

If you are reading this newspaper, the likelihood is that you agree with the Obama administration's recent attacks on conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh. That's the likelihood; here's the certainty: You've never listened to Rush Limbaugh.

What's more, Klavan claims to listen to Limbaugh frequently, and says he has never heard him "utter a single racist, hateful or stupid word."

To someone like me who has been talking about racist, hateful and stupid Limbaugh remarks since the mid-'90s, and who co-authored FAIR's book The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error, Klavan's charge that Limbaugh critics don't listen to his show is a familiar one. In dozens of appearances on conservative radio shows to talk about our book, it was rare that I was not confronted with this now-hackneyed charge, even though I have been listening to Limbaugh for 25 years, starting with his local show on Sacramento's KFBK.

As for Klavan's claim that Limbaugh doesn't say racist, stupid or hateful things, FAIR's book documents scores of Limbaugh statements fitting those categories, including such stupidly false claims as "the poorest people in America are better off than the mainstream families of Europe"; that "there are more acres of forest land in America today than when Columbus discovered America in 1492"; and that "not one indictment" resulted from the Iran/Contra scandal investigation.

As one of the Bush administration's most credulous media stooges, Limbaugh enthusiastically repeated raw government propaganda. For instance, after the invasion, Limbaugh trumpeted Iraq's nonexistent WMDs (4/7/03): "We're discovering WMDs all over Iraq.... You know it killed NPR to report that the 101st Airborne found a stockpile of up to 20 rockets tipped with sarin and mustard gas.... Our troops have found dozens of barrels of chemicals in an agricultural facility 30 miles northwest of Baghdad."

Limbaugh's gullibility also leaves him vulnerable to wacky far-right conspiracy theories. Shortly after Obama's election, Limbaugh attempted to work up his listeners with the ridiculous rumor that the new administration was planning to take over their retirement accounts: "They're going to take your 401(k), put it in the Social Security trust fund."

Limbaugh's falsehood was so egregious that it prompted L.A. Times reporter James Rainey to write:

To broadcast such a report--so drained of context as to constitute a lie--would be a shameless act at any time. But Limbaugh needlessly stirred the fears of the millions he holds in his thrall--making the 401(k) thievery sound like nearly a done deal. Shameless.

And why isn't Klavan familiar with years of hateful broadcasts where Limbaugh heaped abuse on homeless people and those with HIV, using his "Homeless Updates" to propose a "Homeless Olympics" with events including "the Dumpster dig and the hop, skip and trip"; and "AIDS Updates" where he talked about "Rock Hudson's disease" and introduced segments with the Dionne Warwick song "I Know I'll Never Love This Way Again"?

And what is it if not hateful to hope to see an American political convention erupt in violence? That's what Limbaugh said was the aim of his "Operation Chaos," which urged his listeners to support Hillary Clinton in order to divide the Democratic Party:

The dream end of this is that this keeps up to the convention, and that we have a recreation of Chicago 1968 with burning cars, protests, fire and literal riots and all of that. That is the objective here.

And speaking of racism, what about this gem where Limbaugh favorably compared victims of flooding in Illinois and Iowa, to Katrina victims in New Orleans, repeating discredited claims about rampant rape and murder in New Orleans in the process?

I want to know. I look at Iowa, I look at Illinois--I want to see the murders. I want to see the looting. I want to see all the stuff that happened in New Orleans. I see devastation in Iowa and Illinois that dwarfs what happened in New Orleans. I see people working together. I see people trying to save their property.... I don't see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters, I don't see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don't see a bunch of people raping people on the street. I don't see a bunch of people doing everything they can...whining and moaning---where's FEMA, where's Bush. I see the heartland of America. When I look at Iowa and when I look at Illinois, I see the backbone of America.

And has Klavan heard Limbaugh's commentary on Barack Obama? In his response to criticism of his expressed hope that Obama fails, Limbaugh notoriously declared:

We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president.

For more examples of Limbaugh racism, Klavan might have read this L.A. Times op-ed, written by FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and myself. We document many instances of outright racism, including his admission that he once told a black caller to "take that bone out of your nose," asserted that "all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson," and said of a group with a 90-year commitment to nonviolence: "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."

At this late date, no one who's listened to Limbaugh can honestly say that he doesn’t say racist, hateful or stupid things. Which raises the possibility that Klavan doesn't actually listen to Limbaugh, at least with any real care. But what's the L.A. Times' excuse for publishing nonsense which has been debunked in its own pages for at least two decades?

Over on Media Matters' County Fair blog (3/12/09), Jamison Foser asks, "Is there any major-newspaper reporter who is more consistently wrong than Andrew Malcolm?" The latest gaffe by the Laura Bush flak-turned-L.A. Times writer comes in response to filmmaker Michael Moore's explaining what he sees as the difference between Democratic framing of Rush Limbaugh as the GOP's real leader and Republicans' similar claim about Moore and the Democratic Party:

But some commentators (Richard Wolffe of Newsweek, Chuck Todd of NBC News, etc.) have likened this to "what Republicans tried to do to the Democrats with Michael Moore." Perhaps. But there is one central difference: What I have believed in, and what I have stood for in these past eight years--an end to the war, establishing universal healthcare, closing Guantánamo and banning torture, making the rich pay more taxes and aggressively going after the corporate chiefs on Wall Street--these are all things which the majority of Americans believe in too.

Malcolm's LATimes.com piece, attempting to summarize this passage, said:

Moore lists numerous ways that Republican strategists went after him in past years--books, ads, funny photos and how he was booed off the Oscar stage even in liberal Hollywood for his early opposition to the Iraq War, Guantánamo, torture and other things. Did that help Democratic Senator Kerry not get elected in 2004? "Perhaps," Moore admits.

Foser points out that

if you read what Moore wrote, you'll notice that Malcolm is simply not telling the truth. Moore's "perhaps" was not an admission that Republican attacks on him helped to defeat John Kerry; not even close. Moore said "perhaps" there is some similarity between what Democrats are currently doing and what Republicans tried to do to him; he is not saying Republicans were successful. Malcolm simply made that up, and ripped Moore's comment out of context in order to hide the fabrication.

Actually, Foser's citation of the quote's actual context shows that, "In fact, Moore said the GOP's attacks on him backfired."

"10 Things You Didn't Know About Rush Limbaugh," item #10:

10. Limbaugh shares a secluded 24,000-square-foot beachfront mansion in Palm Beach with his cat, Pumpkin. A life-size oil portrait of Limbaugh hangs on the wall of the main staircase.

With all the recent headlines posing Rush Limbaugh as the GOP's de facto leader, Media Matters' Julie Millican and Nathan Tabak provide a timely look back (3/3/09) at the well-documented record of hateful views espoused by the most popular talk radio host in the United States:

On August 23, 2006, discussing the CBS reality TV program, Survivor, in which contestants were originally divided into competing "tribes" by ethnicity, Limbaugh stated that the contest was "not going to be fair if there's a lot of water events" and suggested that "blacks can't swim." Limbaugh stated that "our early money" is on "the Hispanic tribe"--which he said could include "a Cuban," "a Nicaraguan" or "a Mexican or two"--provided they don't "start fighting for supremacy amongst themselves."

Limbaugh added that Hispanics have "probably shown the most survival tactics," that they "have shown a remarkable ability to cross borders," and that they can "do it without water for a long time, they don't get apprehended and they will do things other people won't do." When the Survivor producers decided to dissolve the show's racially segregated "tribes" after only two episodes, Limbaugh declared that "there can only be one reason for this ... that is the white tribe had to be winning."

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you can stomach it, read lots more in this vein on FAIR's website.

Greg Sargent has some observations (Plum Line, 3/4/09) about the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's

new website up called "I'm sorry, Rush" that lampoons the many GOPers who have been forced to prostrate themselves before Rush Limbaugh after criticizing him and enduring the Wrath of Rush or his listeners.

The site appears to be off to a pretty decent start: Nearly 150,000 people have already visited in its first day, DCCC spokesperson Jennifer Crider tells me. The DCCC will blast out an email to supporters telling them of the visit numbers a bit later this afternoon.

Amazingly, the site has gotten this number of visits despite the fact that it isn't linked on Drudge!

Judging this "yet another measure of the public's appetite for the 'Rush wants Obama to fail' storyline," Sargent says the enormous "level of public interest" is "one of the main things driving the Democratic strategy of hanging Rush around the necks of Republicans."

Huffington Post journalist Sam Stein thinks (2/19/09) that "coming off of a tone-deaf cartoon that compared the author of the stimulus bill with a crazed, shot-dead chimpanzee, it seemed likely that, for the time being, provocative political metaphors would be put on hold"--but that would be discounting the offensive superpowers of hate radio staple Rush Limbaugh, whom Stein quotes (via Media Matters) having "pushed the envelope once more":

Within the confines of our Constitution, and the political arena of ideas, they [Democrats] must be stopped. I don't care why they see this country the way they see it. I don't care why a murderer does it. I don't care why a rapist does it. I don't care why this Muslim guy offed his wife's head. The NOW gang is out there saying 'oh, that's not domestic violence, that's just, uh, that's just....' What do they call it? 'Culturally honor killing'.... I don't care, I don't care why anymore.

But what's a little comparison to simple rapists and spouse-murderers for a media figure who's used Nazi references for his foes for years? Read the FAIR Action Alert: "When Are Nazi Comparisons Deplorable?: For Fox News, Only When Republicans Are the Target" (1/16/04)