Kerostasis

You may or may not have noticed, but there was a big flap a week or two ago over some comments Rush Limbaugh made about "phony soldiers" on his radio program. I was a little suprised the topic never showed up in the Sandbox, but to be fair it wasn't given all that much attention in mainstream media outlets.

It did, however, reach the floor of the US Senate, and 41 Senators made fools of themselves by signing this letter to the CEO of Clear Channel Communications (the primary player in syndicating Rush's radio show), blasting Rush for statements he never made and asking Clear Channel to force Rush to apologize.

Rather than apologizing, Clear Channel gave the letter to Rush, who is now auctioning it off on E-bay, and donating the proceeds to charity. The auction ends in a little less than an hour, and the price has reached more than 2 Million Dollars for the letter.

__________________

sc1ence

I may think rush is off base on a number of things. But he is entertaining and has picked what appears to be a fine charity:
http://www.mc-lef.org/Index.asp

winning bid was 2 mil. I am guessing it was from a hacked account. but still.

__________________

Kerostasis

Hacked account? I'm not entirely familiar with that terminology, but I'm guessing you're implying the bid was faked? I would doubt that, since Rush already contacted the winning bidder and then announced the winner's name and resume on air. Also, Rush has promised to match the bid with his own donation, for a total of $4.2 Million to MC-LEF.

__________________

machowner

Well thats surprising, all too many times when items of this nature are done on e-bay, fake accounts or hacked ones run the bids up to crazy amounts. I'm glad this one is real, a great way to donate money if your super-loaded.

__________________

AMosely

I agree with the content of that letter and I think Limbaugh is a hypocritical obnoxious idiot, but I'm glad it (hopefully) raised money for kids who lost parents in the line of duty.

sc1ence

wow, fantastic. People hacking into other accounts and bidding up items without the real account holder knowing has happened a few times in the recent past. I recall this happening several times in the recent past with high priced media interest items.

great news for MC-LEF.

__________________

Lucky Shot

For such good to come from a misguided and misinformed attempt by democrat senators to censor a private citizen is commendable.

Lucky Shot

Kerostasis

The problem with the letter wasn't that it used bad arguments, Mosely. The problem was that it started with bad facts. It was a flat-out lie.

The letter also had a second problem -- it illustrates an abuse of power where 41 Senators on government time would go out of their way to attack free speech by threatening the owner of a media outlet over a particular piece of speech they didn't like.

It's somewhat difficult to efficiently address both problems at once, since the defenses work at cross purposes -- on the one hand, the particular piece of free speech Rush is being attacked for never actually happened, and isn't something either Rush or I would support if it did. On the other hand, Free Speech rights ought to protect it from Senate attack like this even if it did happen the way they said. Yes, it would have been a stupid thing to say, but how many equally stupid comments pass through the media every day without so much as a glance by the Senate? Since when did it become their job to police our thoughts?

__________________

Lucky Shot

The winning bidder appears to be Betty Casey. She also appeared in the news when she was prepared to build a $50 million mayoral mansion in Washington DC. When the project stalled due to a locally divided public, she instead gave the land to the Salvation Army who in turn sold it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

Lucky Shot

El_Gringo_Grande

This is another reason why the federal government is getting such low ratings.

Don't they realize that Rush feeds off this stuff? He craves attention of any kind. He is like that nasty bacteria mentioned in another thread. They just gave him fuel for another 6 months.

So you got Reid et al signing some stupid letter to an asshat stating he is an asshat. Duh.

Bush et al using every situation, no matter how important to our country, to increase the presidents power.

Why? What is the point?

__________________
Sen. Barack Obama (IL) For President '08
---
I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

Steeler

Kero, I forget. Did you have a problem with all those senators passing a resolution condemning the "Betray-us" ad in the NYT the week before?

__________________

Lucky Shot

But a political organization did write General Betray-us versus senators taking 2 words totally out of context to try and hang an entertainer. The term "Phony Soldiers" was used to describe people who lied about their military service including make believe atrocities and claiming to have earned medals for them. Harry Reid attempted to widen that to EVERY soldier which was not the case.

I am used to hearing lies out of Harry Reid and company, this was a perfect example of it.

Lucky Shot

Kerostasis

As I said, Lucky, theres 2 completely different reasons to complain about this letter. While Steeler's comment doesn't diminish the first (the fact that half the letter is lies), it might be a decent response to the 2nd (attack on free speech). Unfortunately I'm too drowsy to take that line of logic any farther tonight, so let me get back to (both of) you on that sometime tomorrow.

__________________

Steeler

I heard the whole exchange in its original context, and I did not take away the same meaning as you. While I don't think it behooves the Congress to take time away from other matters to waggle fingers at obnoxious self-important blowhard brand-name caricatures such as Rush, I also found the statements in question pretty dismissive and offensive to soldiers with legitimate complaints about the war.

__________________

tHa_KhAn

No matter what your opinion or Rush or the war, he did not say anything close to what the letter suggests he did(based on the transcript I read). Rush rightfully took advantage of a situation created by those who thought their clout(ask Sen. Craig) would work for them. Regardless of who it is I enjoy seeing people get their "assumed" powers rejected.

I also feel a line from one individual no matter if they are political or not is no where in the same ball park as a well thought out and funded campaign ad. Love him or Hate him...Rush is good at what he does.

__________________