More from the "fake...but accurate!" files

Tim Blair

Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 01:47pm

 

The UK Telegraph‘s Toby Harnden on those bogus Rush quotes:

Which public figure can be quoted as having said something bigoted and disgusting and it doesn’t matter whether he did or not because he might have? Who can Big Media brand a racist without checking the facts? Who has to prove he did not say something racist, rather than the accuser proving he did?

A pat on the back for anyone who guessed the answer: Rush Limbaugh …

The irony is, of course, that the people reporting this as fact are the same types who are always denouncing bloggers and the internet as forces of evil intent on destroying proper journalism – proper journalism being the kind that involves checking facts.

Note the attribution: “On the radio”. Got a date for that, CNN? Hmm?

In the case of Rush Limbaugh, however, it seems to be enough that the intention (i.e. to show the talk radio host is a racist) is considered pure.

 

Harnden notes a classic evasion from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s Bryan Burwell, one of many who fell for the invented Rushisms:

He states that the quote seemed “so in character with the many things that Limbaugh has said before that we didn’t verify it …”

In other words: Fake … but accurate!

(Via Mark Steyn, who writes: “The race deck is all trump cards.” Limbaugh also has one or two cards left to play, however.)

Posted via email from Garth's posterous