By now, everyone knows about the two fake quotes that have been attributed to Rush Limbaugh. What's being lost in Limbaugh's cries of victimhood over "my high-tech lynching" is the fact that he's made numerous racist statements throughout his career, as Media Matters documents and I write about in my forthcoming book about Limbaugh. The man who called Barack Obama "the little black man-child" cannot persuasively claim to be "color-blind."
What may be the most interesting part of the "fake quotes" story is that Limbaugh himself routinely fakes quotes and is never called to account by the mainstream media. Far from being the victim of false charges about what he's said, Limbaugh is, on almost a daily basis, the perpetrator of the fake quote.
That doesn't excuse all of the foolish journalists and commentators who falsely attributed these quotes to Limbaugh: "I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark." And: "You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed."
We now know that these quotes were apparently put up on WikiQuote in 2005 and then spread around the internet by someone using the nickname "Cobra."
The fake quotes about Limbaugh have been repeated by Rachel Maddow, Jesse Jackson, James Carville, Tamron Hall, CNN's Rick Sanchez, MSNBC's David Shuster, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bryan Burwell, Alternet's Rory O'Connor, the Nation's Dave Zirin, and several places on DailyKos.
Now, the critics of Limbaugh had no sure way of knowing that the slavery quote had been faked, since Limbaugh had never denied these widespread quotes. Limbaugh claimed, "Whatever happened to journalists calling people and saying, ‘Did you actually say this? I'm doing a story on blah, blah, blah. Did you actually say this?’" Well, I tried that. I sent Limbaugh an email on Sunday, telling him that I was writing a book about him, and that I believed the slavery and James Earl Ray quotes were fakes, and asking him for confirmation about this and the other quotes on race he had made. Limbaugh never responded to me.
Working on my book, I encountered these quotes earlier this year and immediately regarded them with suspicion. They didn't quite seem right, especially the James Earl Ray quote. Suspecting that these quotes were fake, in June I asked Jack Huberman, author of the 2006 book 101 People Who Are REALLY Screwing America (and Bernard Goldberg is Only #73) that included them, what his sources had been. Huberman replied that he was too busy on a deadline to look for the sources. This week, Huffington Post removed the quotes from a 2006 Huberman blog based on his book, after he was unable to come up with a reliable source. It seems likely that WikiQuote was Huberman's source. Huberman's book in turn became the source for a Top 10 Racist Limbaugh Quotes list that circulated widely on the web.
Limbaugh called them "these slanderous, made-up, fabricated quotes found in a sewer on the Internet." And he's right. But Limbaugh isn't upset by these fake quotes; he's thrilled beyond belief. Now, Limbaugh gets to attack the media (his favorite hobby) and draw attention away from all of the actual, real racist quotes that he can't deny.
As for Limbaugh's outrage about these fake quotes, it's a remarkable act of hypocrisy from a man who has been faking quotes throughout his entire career.
Limbaugh's propensity for faking quotes is so common that Limbaugh has hired staffers to doublecheck his comments and add "(paraphrasing)" to his transcripts whenever he quotes Barack Obama or some other figure who has never said anything remotely similar to what Limbaugh claims he said. Of course, Limbaugh's listeners don't have the benefit of these after-the-fact corrections and assume that Limbaugh's fake quotes are actually accurate. Go search for "paraphrasing and site:rushlimbaugh.com" and you can find hundreds of examples of Limbaugh inventing fake quotes just in the past three years.
When it came to people repeating false quotes about Limbaugh that Limbaugh himself had never bothered to deny, Limbaugh was outraged: "we are in the process behind the scenes working to get apologies and retractions with the force of legal action against every journalist who has published these entirely fabricated quotes about me, slavery, and James Earl Ray."
But when it came to his own false quotes, Limbaugh has been entirely indifferent to fake quotes.
In one of his books, Limbaugh claimed to be quoting James Madison: "We have staked the future upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." The quote was a fake. Limbaugh admitted, "The quote is not Madison's. But the misattribution of this statement (an error, not 'a lie') has been made by many over the years."
Ah, so when Limbaugh was publishing fake quotes, it was "an error, not 'a lie'" and it was excused because the mistake was made "by many over the years."
On April 27, 1995, Limbaugh read examples of "liberal hate speech" by Pacifica radio host Julianne Malveaux and CBS reporter Eric Engberg from the right-wing Media Research Center's newsletter, unaware that he was reading fake quotes from the April Fool's edition published almost a month earlier. The next day, Limbaugh admitted the quotes were false, but he heroically refused to apologize to the journalists he had falsely smeared: "Given some of the things liberals actually do say, it's not too tough to believe they would say the things Bozell makes up."(April 28, 1995) Limbaugh's error was even more amazing because he had made the exact same mistake of reading the newsletter’s fake quotes as if they were real one year before.(Extra!, 7-8/94)
Limbaugh long ago ceased responding to anyone who pointed out his fake quotes. Instead, he goes on making up things to an uncritical audience of Dittoheads who believe anything he says.
One example came a week ago. At the very same time that news of Limbaugh's bid to buy the Rams was being published and the fake quote about slavery was getting more attention, Limbaugh was spreading news about a different fake quote. On Oct. 7, Limbaugh went ballistic on his show against Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, and announced that he would refuse to take a flu shot in protest. Limbaugh claimed, "you've got Kathleen Sebelius saying you must take the pig flu vaccine, you must take it. Screw you, Mrs. Sebelius." But Sebelius never said anything like this.
So where did Limbaugh get the false impression that Sebelius had ever said this? Well, it turns out to be one of these slanderous, made-up, fabricated quotes found in a sewer on the Internet. In this case, the sewer was what Limbaugh bizarrely calls "state-controlled AP." Limbaugh repeatedly linked on his website to an Associated Press story that declared, "Sebelius: Americans must get swine flu vaccination."
But that headline wasn’t true. The article noted that "Sebelius appealed anew Wednesday for widespread inoculation." Absolutely nothing Sebelius said in the article suggested that vaccination would be mandatory. In fact, since the article talked about Public Service Announcements and other efforts to convince people to get inoculated, it was perfectly clear that Sebelius never said anything about forcing people to get a flu shot.
But Limbaugh never actually read the article. He only read the misleading headline. And then he went on to repeat the lie two days later, "The story yesterday was, Sebelius, 'You must take it,' and that is what I was reacting to." And this week, Limbaugh continued the false attack on Sebelius: "You want us to just bow down and kneel and follow every order issued by people who have no competence or experience in any area in which they are working?" The irony here is that Sebelius never made any order, but millions of Limbaugh fans will bow down before him and follow his order against a flu shot even though he has no competence at all in the area.
So, yes, some careless people read a slavery quote on the internet and assumed it was true because Limbaugh had never tried to refute it and had said so many similar racist things over the years. By contrast, Limbaugh willfully repeated a false statement he read on the internet even though he could have the truth simply by reading a few paragraphs of a story, and then repeated his error.
It's quite possible that people will die in the next few months because Rush Limbaugh persuaded them not to get a flu vaccination due to the fact that he was too lazy to read a 495-word article and decided to launch an anti-government crusade based on a fake quote he read on the internet. The fake quotes about Limbaugh played no role in his difficulties he faced buying the Rams, and instead discredited his critics. By contrast, the fake quote Limbaugh told about Sebelius and the flu shot will probably kill people.
Crossposted at ObamaPolitics.