Rushing to Justice

Ryan… I am going to address each of your bullets here with bullets of my own, which will correspond to your points… following so far? The last bullet will be of my own, and not directed at anything specifically mentioned in your post. Answer as you will…

1) Ryan writes: “In fact he was describing one soldier in one specific instance…” This is patently NOT TRUE. The transcript I have of the call-in to his show is as follows:

Caller (Mike): "What's really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue ..."

Limbaugh: "The phony soldiers."

Caller (Mike): "The phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier… they're proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice and they're willing to sacrifice for the country."

Where in this transcript am I missing the part where the caller or Rush is referring to a specific person? They are not. The caller is insinuating that any serviceman or veteran that is anti-war or liberal in his view is a “phony soldier”… a phrase that Rush brought to the table. The context of the conversation that the caller was having with Rush WAS NOT about Jesse MacBeth specifically, it was about anti-war or anti-Bush comments made by soldiers and sailors.

I couldn’t give less of a shit about what Rush read or aired minutes later concerning MacBeth or previous topics discussed on the program the day before. The conversation with “Mike” the Army guy was about soldiers that the Dems and liberals paraded before the media as show-pieces in their anti-Bush campaign… PERIOD. Thus, any soldier or sailor that is anti-Bush or anti-war is a “phony soldier” according to THIS transcript.

2) Ryan writes: “(Rush) did not make a metaphorical analogy and was in fact making a literal comparison”

I will admit that the passage you were quoting of my post was, in fact, erroneous in its facts… and I retract the “Rush” part without hesitation. Why the “Rush” part?

Because I was mistaken in attributing the “suicide bomber” quip to Rush… it was Bill Bennet making that nice little comment on HIS show on Sept 30 (find your own transcripts) in response to the VetVote.org ad run 48 hours earlier. Yes, it was a “metaphor”… technically speaking… that is undeniable, but for it to be an analogy (which Bennet says it was), then the two compared items or actions must be alike to begin with, where they are NOT alike in a metaphor.

It’s a tasteless metaphor… but it’s a damn bad analogy, ethically or grammatically.

You’re so busy trying to catch me in a screw up… how did you miss the fact that Rush never said those words in the first place? Dumb ass…

3) The “transcript” I am stating that I read… in its entirety… is of the program that had the caller identified as “Mike” in which Rush used the term “phony soldiers” and started the whole circus. The VetVote.org ad ran a full two days later, and the comments by Rush (and Bill Bennet) followed two days after that. I have far more important things to do in my life than read and study every single transcript of the Rush Limbaugh Show on a daily basis. The date of the show that was responsible for the hubbub was Sept 26, and the comments both you and I are referring to in THIS bullet happened on the 30th.

Thus, the word “hero” never occurred in the program that I read. Referring to opposition (politically speaking) service men and women as “hero” four days after the gas hit’s the flame isn’t respect and honor… its damage control.

4) I can’t argue the fact that Rush pandered to veterans and servicemen alike in his comments to rebut the VetVote.org ad… I haven’t seen or heard them outside of the quotes on the news (and the Bill Bennet comment I addressed above).

This does not negate the fact that Rush did not speak of MacBeth or his ilk in the program of Sept 26 PRIOR to the “phony soldiers” comment, and didn’t mention it after until more than 3 minutes had gone by and (undoubtedly) his behind-the-scenes staffers might have thought that addressing the point further might be a good idea. I am even giving the man the benefit of the doubt by assuming that it was these same staffers that bungled the “edited” version of the call-in that furthered the beef upon release by removing the intervening minutes of airtime from the comment to the MacBeth part… so tell me that isn't at least a LITTLE objective.

The caller that Rush was speaking to was critical of ANY serviceman that opposed the war or the President… and Rush agreed by supplying the term “phony soldiers” when the caller was talking about these same military critics. The jist of the conversation was that Dems and liberals flaunt the vets and soldiers that are critical, and no others… and they aren’t REAL soldiers.

Now for my bullet point…

Ryan writes: “Any regular listener to the show would know that the regards in which he holds our soldiers, ALL soldiers, is surpassed by no other group of Americans. They have no greater champion in the media at large.”

I won’t ask for a retraction, simply an explanation for the SEVEN times that Rush referred to a retired Colonel of the United States Marine Corps that hung up his boards after 38 years of dedicated service in which he was awarded TWO Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star (with combat V), and the Navy DSM… as well as the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, as the “epitome of a phony soldier”… those SEVEN (7) times each occurring on his Sept 29th program.

According to you, who is an unquestioned regular listener to his program, he honors and accords ALL soldiers and veterans the respect that real and dedicated selfless service entitles them to, regularly and without fail… even if they are radically liberal Representatives from Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District that oppose and slander the President on a daily basis.

Why is THIS man an exception to YOUR irrefutable facts concerning Rush Limbaugh, conservative commentator extraordinaire?

Oh, and one more thing…

Catchy title for the post. “Rush to Justice” I like that.

So did David Reinhard when he wrote his editorial for the Idaho Mountain Express with the same title yesterday, in which he defended Rush quite eloquently.

Stick to the “Trevor” jokes… you don’t do clever very well yet.