This guy doesn't care about anything.  It's all a big joke:

We've just read Howard Kurtz' Washington Post Op-Ed which recapitulates the Daschle/Limbaugh flap.

It's awful.

He's saying that you can be very aggressive on talk radio - up to a certain point that he doesn't identify - and that Limbaugh is safely away from that threshold. That Limbaugh is not extreme, the proof being that Rush managed to land some face-time with Tom Brokaw on election night.

That's his opinion, which he's free to support - although it makes you wonder what a "media critic" with that attitude is doing anywhere.

We find this line by Kurtz particularly illuminating:

What may really rankle Daschle is that Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North and a slew of like-minded local hosts have honed radio into a scathingly effective message-delivery system.

Which, as we read it, comes off like:

What may really rankle Daschle is that a whole bunch of lying, mud-slinging, character assassins and a slew of like-minded local hosts have honed radio into a scathingly effective message-delivery system.

Kurtz ends with this: (our emphasis)

Over the years talk radio has democratized the airwaves, but occasionally also served as a conduit for hate-mongering and unsubstantiated slurs. Daschle is right in saying that words have consequences. High-decibel talkers like Limbaugh ought to be held accountable in the political arena. But those who find him insufferable should get into the ring and slug it out rather than accuse him of urging the crowd to throw sharp objects.

Two observations:

• Hasn't Limbaugh, in fact, been "hate-mongering" and peddling "unsubstantiated slurs"?  If these comments by Limbaugh about Daschle:

  • "You, sir, are a disgrace. You are a disgrace to patriotism, you are a disgrace to this country, you are a disgrace to the Senate ..."
    
    
  • "What more do you want to do to destroy this country than what you've already tried?"
    
    
  • [Daschle's speech is] nothing more than an attempt to sabotage the war on terrorism for your own personal and your party's political gain."
    
    
  • "Daschle's allies in this situation include the barbarians who run North Korea, the Islamic extremists who run Iran and the mass murderer Saddam Hussein who controls Iraq. That's the company Tom Daschle has joined."
    
    
  • "Now he's decided to roll the dice and align himself with Iran, North Korea and Hussein, In essence, Daschle has chosen to align himself with the axis of evil."

  aren't slurs, what is?   (Source: Spinsanity 1 & 2)
  
  
• And what's this about Limbaugh being held accountable in - presumably only in - the "political arena"? That means that by Kurtz' light, Limbaugh is innocent of any non-political character assassination. And even on that score, Kurtz fails to do his job. Want to talk politics? How about the issue of Global Warming? Limbaugh has suggested to listeners that it might be due to the sun getting hotter (something he says he remembers from his school days). It's true that astrophysicists expect the sun to become a red giant in a billion years (or 5), and that there might be an extremely gradual increase in output during the current "normal" phase. But that has absolutely nothing to do with multi-degree changes in less than 100 years. But you'd never know it from Kurtz.

UPDATE: On CNN's Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz opened the show with these words:

Tom Daschle rails against Rush Limbaugh. Is the senator demonizing the talk show host?

After all that Limbaugh has said about Daschle, Kurts wonders if "the senator [is] demonizing the talk show host". Amazing.


posted by Quiddity at 11/23/2002 06:05:00 PM