When it became public that radio host Rush Limbaugh was involved in a bid to buy the St. Louis Rams NFL football franchise, his detractors began waging an attack on him of immense proportions. Armed with un-sourced Rush “quotes” lauding slavery and Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray, Mr. Limbaugh’s critics set out to deny the avid football fan the opportunity to participate in ownership of an NFL team.
They succeeded.
Limbaugh was dropped from the bidding group by David Checketts, an investor and sports team owner who organized that group.
That would have been the end of the story had it not been for Limbaugh’s unwillingness to cave in by withdrawing from the group and allowing the injustice to go unchallenged. Instead, the conservative commentator pointed out that the “quotes” that had been widely disseminated by the old media (the national networks and urban newspapers) were patently false. He had never uttered them. Nobody had called him to confirm the quotes. Nobody reporting the “quotes” had properly sourced them. They were made up … and the real source of the false quotes appeared to be from a computer in a law firm in New York City that had posted them on Wikipedia.
It was almost predictable that the reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be among the vanguards of pushing the false accusation forward … and they were. Also on the leading edge was NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith, who served as counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder and who was part of the Obama transition team. He not only took the opportunity to hurt a political foe but also to (from his view) help his union in upcoming negotiations with league President Roger Goodell.
The dozens of national media people who had reported the false accusations against Limbaugh as fact are now lining up to retract their statements and apologize. With their “mission accomplished” of assassinating the character of the conservative talk show host and depriving him of his desire to buy the Rams, they will probably continue in their careers without the stigma of being incompetent or evil. One of the benefits of being part of a mob is eventual anonymity.
As bad as the attacks on Limbaugh were, much good is coming from it. Even some of his harshest critics have sprung to his defense. When liberal NPR commentator Juan Williams defended Rush, he himself was attacked and was effectively called a racially insensitive name that so offended him he was visibly shaking with anger discussing the event in a later television appearance.
Limbaugh has often noted on his radio show that “conservatism is on an ascendency” and the scope of the attack indicates a level of fear from those on the left that seems to confirm the talker’s observation. Resorting to making up quotes and spreading them in order to assassinate someone’s character seems to indicate panic among those on the far left, which from my point of view is a good thing.
As for Limbaugh, his calm, cool and level-headed handling of the barrage of attacks by the media and others has earned him new respect and probably will earn him a million or two more listeners, as well.
