It would appear that Rush Limbaugh’s “phony soldiers” flap has largely run its course. When the National Republican Congressional Committee tries to raise money off an incident in which a right-wing blowhard blasted U.S. troops who dare to disagree with him about Iraq, it’s safe to assume Limbaugh isn’t going to lose his audience over this.
But before the controversy fades, Jonah Goldberg, in a New York Post piece attacking Media Matters, offers one last defense for Limbaugh.
The press didn’t care much about the Limbaugh “phony soldiers” story in which Limbaugh was referring to one anti-war activist who pretended to be a military veteran. Journalists for the most part saw it for what it was: a phony story.
Goldberg is, predictably, accepting Limbaugh’s spin at face value. Greg Sargent explains how foolish this is.
As you already know, if you look at the actual words that came out of Rush’s mouth, there’s simply no doubt whatsoever about what he said — and even better, it’s also obvious that even Rush’s own caller took his remarks as a general reference to antiwar troops. […]
Incidentally, Jonah’s assertion that “most” journalists see this as a “phony story” is pretty hard to square against the actual coverage that the story received. The New York Times’s Carl Hulse, for instance, aggressively fact-checked Rush’s remarks in a long piece about the flap (of course, we already know that The Times is conspiring with Congressional Dems and MoveOn to destroy Rush, so this doesn’t count). A look at the rest of the coverage shows that multiple other news orgs took the story seriously, too. Seriously enough, in fact, that they saw fit to tell their readers what the man said. Imagine that.
Quite right. But I was also struck by the inanity of Goldberg’s general smear against Media Matters.
The bulk of Goldberg’s piece is just a general rant. He doesn’t like David Brock, and he finds Media Matters’ reports (which he characterizes as “spam”) to be “usually very stupid or silly or, sometimes, slanderous.”
He cites the recent flap over Bill O’Reilly and his experience at a Harlem restaurant.
They were the ones who made the initial stink about Don Imus’ “nappy-headed hos” gaffe. Imus may have had that coming, but they also recently tried to paint Bill O’Reilly as a racist dunderhead by slanderously distorting his comments about having dinner in Harlem. O’Reilly’s point was that the real middle-class black America is decent and normal, unlike the images found in gangsta rap and the like. Media Matters quoted him as saying he was shocked that none of the black people at a Harlem restaurant talked or acted like F-word-abusing thugs.
Goldberg may not realize it, but he inadvertently alluded to his own confusion: “Media Matters quoted him.” Indeed, that’s the bulk of what Media Matters does — it tells the public what media figures and personalities say, offering audio/video clips and transcripts. The group didn’t “paint” bill O’Reilly as a racist; the group provided people with O’Reilly’s own words, in their full context. And what did O’Reilly say? “I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.”
To hear Goldberg tell it, Media Matters’ biggest sin is shining a spotlight on conservative media figures, as if that were inherently underhanded. Goldberg’s argument, in a nutshell, seems to be: How dare a group show people what Limbaugh and O’Reilly told a national broadcast audience!
We’ve reached an odd point in our discourse. Holding up conservative public comments for scrutiny is considered an “attack.” Presenting the public with conservative clips and context is considered a “smear.” Telling people what conservatives actually say is an example of a “hatchet job.”
No, I don’t understand it either.