Rush the Race-Baiter

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AP Photo Limbaugh's fans say unfair charges of racism blocked his bid to become an NFL owner. Could be—but why don't they care when he's the one doing the race-baiting?

Rush Limbaugh maintains that his efforts to buy an NFL football team failed due to the pernicious influence of race-baiters. They are said to include professional demagogue Al Sharpton, the NFL players union, and a left-leaning blogger who falsely attributed a racist comment to the talk radio host, leading to its broadcast on CNN. "I have something in common with Clarence Thomas," Mr. Limbaugh claimed Thursday on his radio program. “I, too, have had my high-tech lynching.”

Mr. Limbaugh’s situation is unworthy of comparison to the ordeal Justice Thomas endured, but he is owed some sympathy. Even a thick-skinned celebrity must recoil when a national television network erroneously attributes a racist remark to their person. What isn't accurate are the broader defenses being offered by Mr. Limbaugh's fans. "It's no coincidence that Democratic Party outlets like CNN had to dredge up fake quotes to make their case," attorney John Hinderaker wrote on the popular conservative blog Power Line. "Nothing Rush actually said would do the trick, even though he's been on the radio three hours a day, five days a week, for more than twenty years."

Based entirely on statements made by Mr. Limbaugh in 2009, one begins to wonder whether he's been a bigger racial demagogue than even Al Sharpton during that period.

National Review's Andy McCarthy went farther. "So Much for the Post-Racial America," he wrote. "That's how Rush treats people — in the Martin Luther King aspiration that the content of one's character is what matters, not the color of one's skin. Yet, in the media narrative, he's somehow the one who's got a race issue — and the guys who trade on race, live and breathe it 24/7, are held up as our public conscience."

The error here isn't criticizing "guys who trade on race."

I share a powerful distaste for characters like Al Sharpton, who deliberately play on the racial anxieties of Americans. As one of the most powerful slurs in American life, "racist" is an accusation that ought to be made rarely, after careful deliberation, with incontrovertible evidence, and never merely to score points at the expense of a political adversary. So I join Mr. Hinderaker and Mr. McCarthy in asserting that Mr. Limbaugh has never been proved a racist, and that race-baiting is an awful feature of American public discourse. It damages reputations and undermines our ability to target actual racism. Those who engage in it deserve our ire.

But even a cursory review of Limbaugh’s radio archives reveal the talk radio host to be a frequent race-baiter, one of the guys who obsessively trades on race.

In fact, based entirely on statements made by Mr. Limbaugh in 2009, one begins to wonder whether he's been a bigger racial demagogue than even Al Sharpton during that period.

At the very least, he's been bandying about the ‘r’ word rather frequently.

Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates? "He's a racist," Mr. Limbaugh said. "He's an angry racist."

Sonja Sotomayor? "She's a bigot. She's a racist," Mr. Limbaugh said. "How can a president nominate such a candidate? And how can a party get behind such a candidate? That's what would be asked if somebody were foolish enough to nominate David Duke or pick somebody even less offensive."

President Obama? He's "the biggest reverse racist in history." On another occasion: "Just as he is ACORN, just as he is Van Jones, he is racism."On a third: "How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration? By hating white people." So implicitly Mr. Limbaugh is labeling multiple figures within the administration as racists too.

Democrats generally? "The racism that everybody thinks exists on our side of the aisle has been on full display throughout their primary campaign."

Liberals? "You know, racism in this country is the exclusive province of the left."

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