Letters to the Editor
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"We're going to find out where your kids go to school."
Bill O'Rielly made a similar threat recently, against Keith Olbermann and some other reporters who merely pointed out some of his on-air lies.
Personally, I get a weird feeling coming over me when a television or radio personality gives their listeners what amounts to permission to go after someone's children. There are a lot of violent nuts out there who are wound too tight. As I reported last week, I used to have a neighbor who was a foaming at the mouth Limbaugh/O'Rielly fan who threatened me with violence. They are out there, ready to snap at the command of their right wing blabbermouth.
Never dismiss these threats as being overheated rhetoric by the likes of Glenn Beck who all but urges Americans to storm Mosques and do violence to American Muslims.
These hate mongers, such as Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a fag, say they are just being entertaining.
Saying that you are coming after someone's children is not entertainment in any form. It is terrorism.
No matter how much you despise someone's political viewpoint, the day you entreat your listeners to "find out where their children go to school" it is nothing less than a full-blown threat to be taken deadly serious.
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virtue001
you'd better be sure there are no skeletons in your OWN closet first
Limbaugh can't live up to that standard, he's just trying to intimidate people from publishing the indelicate truths about him that they find. "We'll find out where your kids go to school"? That's not digging dirt, that's threatening his children with the implication of physical harm. That's what the mob does. That's what terrorists do.
The "man" is a coward and a bully who has so many skeletons he's had to rent an entire storage warehouse 'cause his closets were overflowing. He's been casting stones his entire career, real ones, twisted ones and ones he's simply made up and now he insists that if anyone dares throw one back, even factual ones, they'd best be without sin themselves? This is hypocracy on a multitude of levels, though Rush being a hypocrite is hardly surprising.
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@Anonymo-Ridiculous
Ya, what we want is for people with millions of dollars and government stooges in their pockets to go after journalists' families. If only Nixon had had the courage to investigate Woodward and Bernstein's childrens' day cares, none of that silly Watergate business would have come to light.
Oh wait, I forgot, the best thing about the Nixon administration was their commitment to quality journalism, in the form of an "enemies list," that he provided to the IRS and FBI. Because the fact that some reporter in Iowa didn't pay his taxes is definitely relevant to the fact that Nixon dirty tricked his way to the presidency, and took bribes in the oval office.
[/snark]
The fact is, Rush Bimbaugh (sp?) calls it a hit piece when someone just quotes him accurately. Just like O'Liar (sp?), who calls anyone who posts transcripts of his show a "smear merchant."
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Paranoia will destroy ya
Sounds as if Rush is as parnoid as Nixon.
Rush lost it long ago. The people whoe believe Rush have to be as nutty as Rush. It might be beneifical if his "legal drugs" dealer to got him more effective drugs.
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Rush is a True Conservative
Which is to say that he's an intellectual coward and a moral degenerate.
In terms of intellectual cowardice: I didn't hear any such outrage when Richard Mellon Scaife and the American Spectator magazine got together to found the "Arkansas Project" to dig up dirt on Bill Clinton. And I didn't hear any such outrage when Michael Isikoff was digging around in Bill Cinton's love life.
In terms of being a moral degenerate: There are so many examples here I don;t know where to begin - drug smuggling tends to lend itself to such excess. But my favorite Rush story is about how this thrice-married and divorced man was busted for a parole violation while traveling to the Dominican Republic because he was carrying Viagra. For what purpose Rush? So your fat ass could get it up with some Domincan prostitutes?
Let's face it - modern conservatives don't give a damn about justice, morality and honor. They only care about winning and they'll do whatever is necessary to destroy their opponents. As tempting as it is to write off Limbaugh as a buffoon, he and his supporters are dangerous people who need to be stopped before we all wake up in a police state one of thse days.
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Answer to anonymous
Anonymous -
"Ah NO...I am not advocating that at all...I'm simply saying that if you are going to dig up someone's history and beat them over the head with it, you may want to make sure YOU don't have a history you don't want brought up either."
Now I think you're just engaging in hyperbole to cover your tracks. Since the story was never published, we can't judge for ourselves whether it was a hatchet job or simply a fair article that Rush didn't like. We are entirely dependent on Rush's account, which we cannot trust to be unbiased. Clearly, you support using intimidation and threats of retribution to suppress the free exchange of information. That's an ethical position that you - and apparently many other Republicans - have chosen to embrace.
So, go dig in people's garbage cans - just don't expect to come out of the process looking clean.
"Of course conversely, you seem to think it's ok for someone to go thru someone else's past with no problem at all. And if there was sufficient time to sue for liable before the damage was done, that would be ok...but if there isn't, then too bad, yes?"
You got me there - I do think it is OK to go through public figure's past, as long as you are not violating any laws while doing so. That's the price of being a public figure - people will write books and articles about you that you're not going to like. Some of them will in fact will be slanderous - as were many of the things that were written about Bill Clinton and no doubt many of the things that are now being written about George W. Bush.
One of the interesting things about libel, though, is that you can't sue for libel pre-emptively - you can certainly THREATEN to sue for libel pre-emptively but you can't actually sue until the libelous material is in fact published. You can only sue for damages, not to prohibit the publication of the material in the first place.
As for the issue of timing, I would think that it takes as much time to threaten to sue for libel as it takes to blackmail a person in the way that Rush is suggesting.
I think it's funny that Rush Limbaugh, who routinely incorporates ad hominem attacks and false information into his commentary, is so thin-skinned about criticism. Think of all the damage he is able to do without giving his targets ANY advance notice! In fact, have you ever considered that the unwanted incursions into his own personal life might just be tit-for-tat for all the libels he has spread over the years over the airwaves?