Rush Limbaugh Tries to Cover His (Ample) Butt

UPDATED at bottom of post.

Photo from Wikipedia.org

I mentioned the other day that I occasionally catch Rush Limbaugh's 90-second "Morning Update," and that it is loaded with misinformation. On September 25th, I caught a particularly egregious installment, about a man who claimed to be an Iraq War vet, and is in reality a fraud.

Of course, Rush wasn't content to just report on the story, he had to tart it up in "Democrats are hypocrites/traitors/evil" clothing. He claimed this man, Jesse Macbeth, was a "liberal poster boy" for the war, and that his unmasking as a fraud was somehow indicative of the methods of the entire anti-war movement. Now, prior to Rush's story, I--a liberal, lefty, moonbat blogger--had never once heard of Macbeth.

But if I had, would it be somehow the anti-war movement's fault if they were snookered? This reflects more on our infotainment, celebrity-for-15-minutes society, than it does about the anti-war movement. And incidentally, Rush portrays anyone against the Iraq war as "the anti-war left." Rush, unless 70% of the country is now on the left, you are just lying when you say that.

The timing of Limbaugh's comments about Macbeth was fortuitous. It provided him some cover for his comments (the very next day) about "phony soldiers," his new term for veterans who are against the Iraq War. See what I mean, here:

[Excerpt]

“I never said what you think I said, Congressman Pallone, congresswoman Schakowsky, Senator Kerry, or any of the rest of you in the Drive-By Media,’’ Limbaugh said today on his radio program. “I was talking about a genuine phony soldier.

“And, by the way, Jesse MacBeth is not the only one,’’ Limbaugh continued today. “How about this guy Scott Thomas who was writing fraudulent, phony things in the New Republic about atrocities he saw that never happened? How about Jack Murtha blanketly accepting the notion that Marines in Haditha engaged in wanton murder of innocent children and civilians?"

Read about it here: Weblogs.BaltimoreSun.com

Read more about Jesse Macbeth at: Wikipedia.org

UPDATE: Of course, there is a little more to this story. Limbaugh did mention Jesse Macbeth in the same program as his "phony soldiers" comment. But, it was almost two minutes later, and is no credible way what he was talking about before. In order to conflate the two, he replayed the audio, but excised most of the time between the two comments, to make it appear that they were part of the same thought process. Nice try, Rush. You're still a pig.

Read about it (with audio) at: MediaMatters.org