Black sports columnists love it: Jason Whitlock, on Foxsports.com is using it right now in saying the NFL should not allow Limbaugh to be part-owner of the St. Louis Rams. But does he have a footnote with an air date? No.
When I did a Nexis search for Limbaugh and James Earl Ray, I couldn't find a single use of this so-called quotation until this March. Consider the source: Jarvis Tyner, executive vice chair of the Communist Party USA. He doesn't have a footnote either:
Limbaugh is a racist. He is the radio personality that said that Martin Luther King’s assassin James Earl Ray should get the Medal of Honor!
Tyner writes that Limbaugh has an "undeniable" record of bigotry. But a professional journalist shouldn't take fantastical quotes and assume they're real without checking, passing them along recklessly with no air dates and no audio clips to prove that these words came out of Limbaugh's mouth.
For example: would our cable networks and sports columnists suggest this is a credible quote? From Edward Klein's book The Truth About Hillary, a scene from the Clintons vacationing in Bermuda, page 90. According to an anonymous source, Klein claims a drunken Bill said:
"I'm going back to my cottage to rape my wife," he said.
Did anyone try to spread that quote on cable news or Fox websites? Or was it too implausible to spread?
Should we really believe that the Hillary Clinton-owned and operated media watchdogs on the left would have ignored such an assassin-praising Limbaugh quote if it really happened?
Someone ought to write the National Association of Black Journalists and ask if being black and angry means never having to cite sources like a journalist.
