Wingers Defending Rush Keep Refusing To Tell Their Audience What He Actually Said -- Jonah Goldberg The Latest
October 7, 2007 -- 1:26 PM EST // //
I've noticed a funny coincidence when it comes to the right-wingers who are defending Rush Limbaugh over his "phony soldiers" comment. Those wingers who are most vehement in their defense of Rush -- and most aggressive in their denunciations of Rush's critics -- always seem to fail to share with their readers the sum total of what Rush actually said, so that they can make up their own minds.
Today, for instance, Jonah Goldberg published a very long piece attacking Media Matters, primarily pegged to the group's alleged smear of Rush. If you go searching through the article for a discussion of the actual words Rush uttered, here's the total of what you find:
The press didn't care much about the Limbaugh “phony soldiers" story in which Limbaugh was referring to one anti-war activist who pretended to be a military veteran. Journalists for the most part saw it for what it was: a phony story.What's amusing about this is that Jonah isn't merely informing readers of Rush's "out of context" pushback, which came long after the controversy erupted. Rather, he's adopting Rush's explanation as outright fact. In so doing, Jonah actually writes (with a straight face) a single sentence that contains both the plural word "soldiers" and the idea that this was a reference to "one" anti-war activist. Pretty impressive, that.
As you already know, if you look at the full exchange between Rush and his caller, there's simply no doubt whatsoever about what he said -- and even better, it's also obvious that even Rush's own caller took his remarks as a general reference to antiwar troops. A sidebar tacked onto Jonah's piece gives a bit more context, but not remotely enough for readers to evaluate Rush's pushback in any substantive way.
As I noted the other day, right-wing talk show host Melanie Morgan also is exhibiting the same bizarre aversion to telling her readers what Rush actually said as she seeks to defend the poor, persecuted talk show host. Intriguing coincidence, isn't it?
Incidentally, Jonah's assertion that "most" journalists see this as a "phony story" is pretty hard to square against the actual coverage that the story received. The New York Times's Carl Hulse, for instance, aggressively fact-checked Rush's remarks in a long piece about the flap (of course, we already know that The Times is conspiring with Congressional Dems and MoveOn to destroy Rush, so this doesn't count). A look at the rest of the coverage shows that multiple other news orgs took the story seriously, too. Seriously enough, in fact, that they saw fit to tell their readers what the man said. Imagine that.
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