Rush should have stopped while he was ahead. Limbaugh’s "phony soldier"
slur continues to get worse every time the man now opens his mouth about it.
Friday was a lesson in what not to do if you’ve stepped in it. Army
of Dude lays Limbaugh out (h/t memeorandum).
It is also positively absurd for wingnuts to assert that Limbaugh was talking
about one phony soldier or even specific frauds wearing the uniform. When you
start lumping Jack Murtha and John Kerry into the mix it’s even worse, especially
when the "phony soldiers" line was plural to begin with and the one
soldier Rush is hanging his hypocrisy on wasn’t mentioned until several comments
after the disgusting slur. The Kerry commentary Rush carried on his show Friday
harkens back to what Kerry had to go through during 2004, which now even Newt
Gingrich has called “cheap and nasty.” Ya think? Too bad the chickenhawk didn’t speak up when
it mattered, but that’s not the right’s way.
Whether Democrats manage to pass the resolution condemning Rush’s "phony
soldier" slur, one thing is for sure. Mr. Limbaugh has fallen a long way
from where he began. His drug surrender was one thing, but his continuing spiral
downward is now like watching a slow moving train wreck. This continual assault
on the Limbaugh slur is very important. It’s a warning to the wingnuts that
Democrats aren’t going to take these attacks silently any longer. As for Rush, he’ll still have his listeners to keep him warm; people who remain on the other end of a very long line.
Rush is running out of rope.
From the September 28 edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Rush Limbaugh
Show:LIMBAUGH: I was not talking, as [MSNBC's] Contessa Brewer said here, about
the anti-war movement generally. I was talking about one soldier with that
"phony soldier" comment, Jesse MacBeth. They had exactly what I’m
going to play for you. This is Michael J. Fox all over again. Media Matters
had the transcript, but they selectively choose what they want to make their
point. Here is — it runs about 3 minutes and 13 seconds — the entire transcript,
in context, that led to this so-called controversy.[...]
LIMBAUGH: He just assumed that what he was told was true, that I called anti-war
troops "phony soldiers," when everybody involved in this knows full
well I was talking about one genuine, convicted, lying, fake soldier who was
undermining this mission, who was doing his best to demoralize the troops.
I stand up for the troops. The Democrat [sic] Party has been trying to demoralize
them. The Democrat Party has been trying to lose the Iraq war, the war on
terror. They own defeat. They are invested in it. They have failed to hang
defeat around the neck of this president and the presidency they have been
trying to destroy.Later on September 28, Limbaugh again changed his story after a caller pointed
out the contradiction:LIMBAUGH: Putting it all in context — I’m sorry you missed it. What I can
tell you is that what you’re hearing on these shows is, is so incompetently,
purposefully taken out of context. It’s something I never said. I was talking
— I did say, "phony soldiers," talking about an actual fraud named
Jesse MacBeth, who is found –CALLER: But you did say "soldiers" in plural, though, didn’t you?
LIMBAUGH: Yes, because there have been a number of these people, but they
were not active duty — I was not talking about anti-war, active duty troops.
I was talking about people who’ve been exposed as frauds who never served
in Iraq but claimed to have seen all these atrocities, [unintelligible]. Claimed
to be a Green Beret, he was an Army Ranger, he never was [unintelligible].
Claimed that he had a Purple Heart. He never got one. He was busted out of
the Army in 44 days in boot camp. This is the guy I was talking about.
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