Rush Limbaugh was convicted of racism in a kangaroo court of "objective" media and dropped as a potential owner of the St. Louis Rams football franchise. His accusers claimed he once said slavery "had its merits" and that the assassin of Martin Luther King deserved a "Medal of Honor." The story circulated on the Internet and was eventually picked up by the major media, including both CNN and MSNBC.
But no one bothered fact-checking. In fact, his accusers and those media that repeated the accusations never stopped to ponder that there was no need to fact-check this, so obvious were the fabrications.
Start with this reality: One could clearly dismiss these quotes as fabrications based on the simple fact that Limbaugh would never have uttered them, since he doesn't believe them. Period.
 Add to it this second piece of common sense: Were Limbaugh guilty of uttering this garbage back in 1998, would we really be discussing it for the first time in October of 2009? Common sense tells us that if he made these comments on his show, his advertisers would dump him so quickly, he'd be out of a job by sundown.
Let's give the media a break and conclude that when it comes to Rush Limbaugh, they just have no common sense. Fine. That's where fact-checking comes in. A couple of minutes on the computer would have proven that these quotes were pure fantasy put forward by radical leftists, with no substantiation whatsoever, purely to assassinate this man's character, as is their wont.
But the Left -- including many in the "news" media -- is so blinded by its hatred of Rush Limbaugh that it will accept any accusation as authentic, and the more salacious, the better.
Start with CNN. This network is so prideful of its professionalism that it fact-checks comedy skits on "Saturday Night Live." Clearly it needs to focus less on comedy shows on NBC and more on the "news" coming from its own anchors. On Oct. 12, afternoon anchor Rick Sanchez showed his expertise at hit-and-run journalism by repeating the "slavery had its merits" quote as fact, with no effort whatsoever to authenticate it before moving on. When it was made clear that no authentication existed, and an apology was in order, instead Sanchez made matters worse. The following day, again he read the offensive fabrication, but this time added Limbaugh's denial, "to be fair to Rush," thus keeping alive the possibility that the accusation was truthful. On Friday, four days after they broadcast a falsehood, Sanchez finally delivered an apology.
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