Checking On Limbaugh New Book Challenges Veracity Of Talk Show Host’s Statements Point By Point
If Rush Limbaugh is the talk-show Superman, able to lead public opinion and bend government debate in a single broadcast, Jeff Cohen hopes his new book is Kryptonite.
Cohen and two cohorts take on the conservative talker in a new book called “The Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error” (The New Press, $6.95).
After an extended examination of Limbaugh’s world of “dittoheads,” “femi-Nazis” and “environmental wackos,” the trio claim the emperor of the airwaves has no clothes - or at least no grip on the facts.
“We went to the core of Limbaugh and found that what he believes in is based on distortions and lies,” said Cohen, who wrote the book with Steven Rendall and Jim Naureckas for the media watchdog group FAIR.
Limbaugh has challenged FAIR’s claims in the past, referring to himself as an “exceptionally accurate commentator.”
Taking on media giants is literally all in a day’s work for the authors from FAIR, which exists to lambaste mainstream news outlets for what it calls corporate bias. In taking on Limbaugh, Cohen and his co-authors studied his on-air utterances for months and combed through his books.
Then they gathered nuggets of Limbaugh-isms and counterpointed them with findings of their own. According to the book:
Limbaugh says on his TV show that a Tufts University study found an inverse relation between a coed’s bra size and her IQ. FAIR said it found no evidence of such a study.
Limbaugh says in a book that there are more American Indians alive today than in Columbus’ time; FAIR cites U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs figures to the contrary.
Limbaugh says on his radio show that “women were doing quite well in this country before feminism came along”; FAIR notes that American women couldn’t even vote in the 19th century.
Limbaugh says on TV that were it not for only 4,000 votes - had they gone another way in Chicago - Richard Nixon would have been elected in 1960”; FAIR notes John F. Kennedy won in 1960 with 303 electoral versus 219 for Nixon; Illinois had only 27 electoral votes.
And so on, for more than 100 examples.
Cohen, a 43-year-old self-proclaimed progressive who founded FAIR in 1986, refers to the endless hours watching, reading and thinking about Limbaugh as a joyless job, raising the question: Why did they spend so much time listening to him if they think he’s a blowhard?
Cohen says he took up the cudgel as a public service. Limbaugh is playing fast and loose without being held accountable, he says.
“It just got to the point that this guy was getting bigger and bigger. We were shocked that no one had done it, just blown away,” Cohen said during an interview at his home in the Catskill Mountains.
“We tried to do an objective critique. Obviously, one could argue with his politics, but that’s pointless.”
The book is a slim “point of purchase” volume, meant to catch book buyers’ eyes at the checkout counter. It’s an outgrowth of a well-publicized report FAIR released last summer that blasted Limbaugh in the same manner. Many charges in the report are repeated in the book.
Limbaugh had released a 37-page point-bypoint refutation of the FAIR report.
“The facts support me,” Limbaugh wrote in the case of the Indian population, citing large populations of Iroquois and Latin American Indians.
Some of the competing claims between Limbaugh and FAIR, such as those about the well-being of women, are disputes over opinions, not facts. Others, like the Tufts bra size study, are easy to nail down.
“It never happened,” university spokeswoman Gail Bambrick said.
Likewise, FAIR’s research on the 1960 presidential election is accurate.
Limbaugh declined comment on the book.
Cohen says his attack on Limbaugh is strictly professional. But listening to Cohen recount his first encounter with Limbaugh’s radio show leaves little doubt about his personal feelings.
“I was in a cab, I don’t listen to a lot of talk shows … and it was just vile, it was so vile. You know, at that point he was just a nobody. It was so vile, I had to tune it out and read in the cab,” Cohen said.
Cohen wants to cut the conservative media giant down to size through one-on-one debates, but Limbaugh won’t speak to him. Instead, the authors are hitting the talk show circuit, looking forward to the day when they can again turn full attention to other media targets.
“His errors are so unending, we could become a Rush Limbaugh media monitoring group,” Cohen said of FAIR. “And we have other things to do.”
xxxx What ‘Reign of Error’ says about claims Selections from “The Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error”: Limbaugh: On news reports that Bill Clinton’s budget deficit might drop to $180 billion: “$180 billion is still billions more than any of the eeevil deficits Reagan ever ran up.” (Limbaugh Letter, 4/94) Reality: Eeeroneous. Reagan’s budget deficits from 1983 through 1986 all exceeded $180 billion, with the 1986 deficit over $220 billion. (Adjusting for inflation to 1994 dollars, all eight Reagan deficits were over $180 billion.) Limbaugh: On the Gulf War: “Everybody in the world was aligned with the United States except who? The United States Congress.” (TV 4/18/94) Reality: Both houses of Congress voted to authorize the United States to use force against Iraq. Limbaugh: “(Al Gore) thinks the automobile’s more dangerous than nuclear weapons - and the Soviet Union is still aimed at us.” (TV 9/29/93) Reality: The Soviet Union, no longer aiming missiles at anyone, had ceased to exist in December 1991. Limbaugh: Extolling U.S. health care: “Ask anyone you know from a foreign country … which country is the envy of the world when it comes to health care.” (“Told You So,” p. 153) Reality: According to a Gallup Poll, only 2 percent of Canadians believed that the U.S. health care system is better than their own. (Toronto Star, 9/13/93) Limbaugh: “There is a law that’s coming down, a regulation from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which says that if you have a Bible at your desk at work, then you are guilty of religious harassment.” (TV 6/9/94) Reality: That very day EEOC Executive Director Douglas Gallegos testified before a Senate subcommittee and declared that having a Bible on your desk is protected speech. (The New Republic, 8/8/94) Associated Press