Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Monday Morning Quarter-backtrack   [Mark Steyn]

My old London Telegraph colleague, Toby Harnden, has a piece on Rush and the fake slavery/James Earl Ray quotes that's better than anything you're likely to read in the dying U.S. monodailies:

Even those who have been primary movers in spreading these malicious falsehoods – which would lead to payouts of hundreds of thousands in British libel courts if lawsuits were ever filed there – are brazenly unapologetic.

Thus, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bryan Burwell pens this column containing the slavery quote and then follows up with another column with a kind-of-sort-of-well-not-really-at-all mea culpa in which he states that the quote seemed “so in character with the many things that Limbaugh has said before that we didn’t verify it beyond the book”. 

OK, so it sounded right and it was on the internet or in a book or something so it was fine to just go ahead and print it as stone-cold fact without any attribution? I wonder which journalism school teaches that?

And Burwell caps it off by implying – nudge, nudge, wink, wink – that Limbaugh’s really lying: “Fine, let’s play along for the time being and take him at his word that he was inaccurately quoted in the Huberman book.” I’m no fan of British libel laws but, again, if that had been printed in the UK it would have led to a hefty payout for aggravated damages.

Can anyone play this game? Bryan Burwell says, "I like to have sex with donkeys." What's that? He didn't actually say it? Fine, let's play along for the time being and take him at his word that he was inaccurately quoted . . .

Rush should buy The St Louis Post-Dispatch.

Meanwhile, the geniuses at Media Matters say: You want chapter-and-verse on those "Slavery was great/Give James Earl Ray the Medal of Honor" quotes? Okay, here's some stuff Limbaugh has said about Obama . . .

The race deck is all trump cards:

Step One: You can't say that. It's racist.

So you don't. Next:

Step Two: You're using "code language".

As I always say, "code language" is code language for "I’m inventing what you really meant to say because the actual quote doesn’t quite do the job for me." Still, you steer clear of "code language." So then:

Step Three: We'll just concoct it out of whole cloth, and, after running for a week with "Slavery Advocate Wants Medal of Honor for MLK Killer", our fact-checkers will confirm the accuracy of that statement by citing something you said about Donovan McNabb or Obama's economic policy. Close enough.

PS Can Rush buy the St Louis Rams if he gets Roman Polanski to front the deal?

(See John Hinderaker's conclusion, not to mention the CNN graphic he reproduces.)

10/14 08:32 PMShare