Limbaugh Blasts Media Response to Giffords Shooting, Warns of Regulations on Political Speech

Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves Monday to blast the media's response to Saturday's shooting in Tucson, Arizona. In a lengthy segment on the topic, he called the media's reaction "utterly, childishly silly, embarrassing."

Limbaugh went on to speculate that the liberal media will try to use the shooting - and the conservative movement's supposed complicity in it - to silence opposing political views. He echoed a number of points made Monday by NB publisher Brent Bozell, who decried the media's effort to "criminalize" conservative thought.

A number of leftist personalities have hinted, of late, at using the FCC's regulatory authority to get Limbaugh and other conservative talkers off the air.

Rush began:

What an embarrassing weekend it has been for the media. I mean, utterly, childishly, silly embarrassing. I knew it was going to happen the minute I heard about the shooting. I got on the horn with some people, said, "You wait. It's in the template. It's gonna follow." So predictable, so childish, so immature, and it has led to a number of people making abject fools of themselves. The sheriff of Pima County has made a fool of himself. I don't know if he knows it yet or not. Most in the State-Controlled Media, the Drive-By Media, are illustrating why we call them "the Drive-By Media." They are literally making fools of themselves to take an incident like this and to try to turn it into a political advantage by accusing people that have nothing whatsoever to do with this sordid, unfortunate event, as accomplices to murder. It's silly on its face.

As noted in today's open thread, the public has, if a single poll is accurate, neglected to buy into the spin the mainstream press has put on the shooting. Fifty-seven percent of Americans, according to a CBS survey, do not believe the shooting was a result of the nation's political climate - let alone inspired by any American political figure.

Perhaps that fact is, in part, responsible for the apparent shift in the media's approach to the story, which, as Rush noted, is ongoing:

By the way, they're already moving off of this, folks. They're now talking about gun control. That's the indication that they're preparing to move off of the fact that I, the Tea Party, Palin, and all these other people are responsible for this. They're now moving to gun control. That was also predictable. What that happens, you know that they're beginning to change course on this. Now, I guarantee you that somewhere in a desk drawer in Washington, DC -- someplace in an FCC bureaucrat's office or someplace -- the government machinery will be in place to take away as many political freedoms as they can manage on the left. They already have it in place, just like the health care bill, Obamacare, was already written years ago. It was in a desk drawer waiting for the moment that they could begin to implement it.

The same thing here. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody in the Obama administration or some FCC bureaucrat or some Democrat congressman has it already written up, such legislation, sitting in a desk drawer somewhere just waiting for the right event for a clampdown. They have been trying this ever since the Oklahoma City bombing. They have. You know, I debated with myself whether to, on this program today, cite and play for you audio examples of the left actually engaging in the behavior about which they have accused us on the right of behaving and engaging in. I've gone back and forth on it, and I have a whole lot of audio sound bites to make this illustration, and I'm going to do so. I decided I'm gonna do it, because it needs to be done. People need to be reminded. But here you have a 22-year-old kid, a dopehead, marijuana. Just genuinely insane, irrational.

Limbaugh also discussed the apparent desire on the parts of a number of mainstream talking heads to see a national disaster that President Obama can exploit for his own political gain.

And the first thought, the desperate hope that the losers in November of 2010 had, was that they could revitalize their political fortunes because of this unfortunate shooting of a congresswoman in Arizona. That was the most important thing to them -- and that, to me, is sick. You know that they were rubbing hands together. You know that they were e-mailing and calling each other on the phones saying, "A-ha, this might be the one! This might be the one where we can officially tie it to these guys and shut 'em up and shut 'em down." They want you to believe that sadness was on the order of the day, and I'm sure it was, but the opportunity! They couldn't help themselves. They just couldn't help themselves.

Limbaugh concluded with a roundup of several acts violence for which the liberal press has tried to pin responsibility on the conservative movement or individuals within it.

Here's a partial list of some of the incidents the left has tried to pin on conservatives. The Columbine shooters. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (specifically they tried to blame me for that). The DC sniper. The New York City Times Square car bomb attempt. They tried to blame that on some Tea Partier angry at the health law, then we find out that was radical Islamists. The February 2010 IRS plane attack in San Antonio. Remember that? It had to be an anti-government clown that flew that plane into the IRS office, had to be. The Pentagon subway shooter. The Fort Hood attack. The Discovery Channel hostage taker. And this guy [John Patrick] Bedell who went into the Pentagon and wanted to shoot these people up. This guy, by the way, is a dead ringer for Loughner. Amy Bishop who shot her colleagues at that Alabama college.

The list goes on and on and on. They are countless. The list actually is never ending of incidents like this where the media is damn certain, damn well certain they can give Obama his OKC bombing. They can give a Democrat president some kind of massive murder or disaster caused by conservatives. That remains the number one effort. They sit around and they wait for these events to happen, hoping and praying that what they know are lies -- what they know are false allegations, nonexistent associations -- can somehow be made to be believed by the public at large.