Race baiting, Rush Limbaugh style.

In my September 25, 2009, post, I asked, rhetorically, if race baiting in this country was dead. The answer, of course, was no. Recent events have now demonstrated that race baiting in this country is not only alive and well, it may be worsening.

This week, it was revealed that Rush Limbaugh was a minority investor in a consortium seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams football team. Upon learning this, the Left reflexively jumped offside. CNN, MSNBC, and other purportedly-reputable media outlets rushed to condemn Limbaugh, falsely reporting that Limbaugh had made statements defending slavery on the merits, and saying that Martin Luther King's murderer deserved a medal. This country's premier race baiters, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, also piled on.


Rush has now been dropped from the Consortium.

Not surprisingly, it turned out these "news" reports were false. For starters, Rush has repeatedly said over the years that he, like Martin Luther King, dreams of a country in which people are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Additionally, it beggars belief that Rush made these statements years ago, and no one noticed, much less expressed outrage, at the time.

The fake quotations apparently trace back to a website, which provided no documentation for the bogus quotes. CNN "explained" that it didn't bother to fact-check its story beyond its secondary, undocumented source.

So the legacy media (formerly known as the mainstream media) has sunk to this: CNN will take the time to fact-check a Saturday Night Live skit about Obama, but it won't take the time to fact-check its own news report.

Does CNN understand that it is becoming the new Comedy Channel?