Thursday, October 15, 2009

Rush Limbaugh, Libel, and the NFL

Posted by Tom Sawyer.

I am not a great fan of the NFL so it will not be a great sacrifice for me to decide that I have had enough of that organization and will no longer be spending any money or time on it. Decision made.

What has happened over the last week concerning Rush Limbaugh and his bid, as part of a buying group, to purchase the St. Louis Rams, an NFL franchise, has been well-documented in several places. Try here, here, here for a run-down on the political hatchet job that has been done against Limbaugh.

The incident exposes the mainstream media in this country for the leftist hacks that they are (as if they hadn't already exposed themselves in that vein a thousand times over). See this libelous screen shot from CNN for example:


This was not the only false quotation attributed to Rush Limbaugh nor was CNN the only place where it happened. Like lemmings, the entire main stream media followed Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton over that cliff. Everyone knows Rush Limbaugh is a racist, why should anyone actually check facts? Right?

Make no mistake. Rush is the victim of a deliberate and malicious campaign of character defamation perpetrated by our society's self-proclaimed arbiters of civility. (What ever did happen to civil discourse?) And this was done to send a message. Did you get the message?

Here it is: if you disagree with us, keep your mouth shut. If you do open your mouth we will destroy you even if we have to make up quotations out of whole cloth and attribute them to you falsely. We will lie and lie with impunity to destroy you if necessary. So keep your mouth shut.

That's the message from the main stream media and the progressive movement as a whole and it does not just apply to Rush Limbaugh, it applies to the rest of us as well. He was made an example for us.

There is also a message from the NFL and it is this. If you are conservative or libertarian--in other words if you disagree with the current climate of political correctness and progressive/liberal thought--and you dare speak openly about it, you are not welcome. You have proved yourself to be a second-class citizen. We do not want you.


Meanwhile, the real racists, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, are quoted all over the place as if they are authorities on race. The NFL, presumably, would rather be associated with the likes of them than of Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh, you see, is too polarizing, too controversial. Of course, no one thinks that Keith Olbermann is too polarizing or controversial. No one in the NFL front office thinks he is guilty of hate speech. And the NFL has no problem being affiliated with him. The NFL has chosen sides. They have said "yes" to the Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, and Keith Olbermanns of the world and "no" to conservatives and libertarians. Really, why should we give them our money?

Roger Goodell is an idiot, or a hypocrite. You decide. Maybe just the term "leftist" will suffice.

7 comments:

Neil Cameron (One Salient Oversight) said...

What you lacked was a reputable link to help your argument.

Here's one

Tom Sawyer said...

The only documented and confirmed quotations on that page were not racist, including the McNabb quotation.

Do you agree it was a smear job?

Neil Cameron (One Salient Oversight) said...

Do you agree it was a smear job?

No, just bad journalism, which is a hallmark of a free market dominated media system.

Tom Sawyer said...

No, just bad journalism, which is a hallmark of a free market dominated media system.

ROFL

The fact that CNN recently fact-checked a Saturday Night Live skit lampooning Obama but did not bother to fact check the Limbaugh quotes is not a reflection of bias? And, fyi, Jackson and Sharpton are not journalists, so their contributions could not be considered "bad journalism."

But, you're right, we probably could use a state-run media.

Right?

Neil Cameron (One Salient Oversight) said...

But, you're right, we probably could use a state-run media.

About 50-50 Free Market / State run would be the best. They could keep each other accountable for their excesses (Free market excess = only reporting what is profitable. State-run excess = only reporting what is good for the party in power)

James Spurgeon said...

It would seem to me, and I'm just thinking out loud here, that we already have such a system in place as Salient proposes. Although NPR and PBS pretend objectivity, they are certainly state-run media.

Neil Cameron (One Salient Oversight) said...

But not as widespread as, say, the BBC or the Australian ABC.