June 30, 2004

Rush Limbaugh is not Michael Moore. Jeff Jarvis thinks that "It's time to treat Michael Moore as the extremist that he is." Adding that Moore is "Simple-minded, simplistic, mean, venemous, a hate-monger who does nothing to advance the debate and aims instead to divide." So far so good. But then he adds this "And the same goes for Rush". Well, no, the same does not go for Rush Limbaugh.

Limbaugh does not trade in deceit, Limbaugh often does advance the debate in rather complex ways. Limbaugh isn't a hater, and he seeks to pursuade, which he often does, as countless thousands of phone calls over the years bare witness. And his show is full of information, often read from newspapers and magazines.

Jeff Jarvis simply doesn't have his facts straight here. He's showing his lefty journalist social cohort bias here, and he's not dealing off the top of the deck with the reader.

This is a meme which is floating around the center-left -- and its a false one. A real slander on Limbaugh. Time to kill it in the crib.

The Rush = Moore meme got a big bump from CNN's reporter Jeff Greenfield late last week:

"I think this is -- there's no pretense that this is a fair movie. To me, it's like a Rush Limbaugh rant. Rush Limbaugh takes facts and shapes them around his point of view. I also think that how you see this movie to a great extent depends on how you see the war. Jeff's blog, which a lot of us read, has been relatively looking for positive news, I think. You remind us that the media can sometimes be negative. People who look at this war and think it was a mistake from the beginning, or worse, are going to love this movie. But he doesn't pretend that it's fair.
Rush Limbaugh responds to Greenfield here.

I'll get back to this story over the course of the week. Posted by Greg Ransom | TrackBack