Today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an “Editor’s Note” on their sports pages about the false quote attributed to radio host Rush Limbaugh, that Limbaugh had supposedly said that slavery “had its merits.” The paper says the quote came from a left-wing book that offered “no specific details” about its origins and that “the Post-Dispatch continues to research the origin of the quote.”

Back on October 7, Post-Dispatch sports writer Bryan Burwell was the first to inject the quote into the debate about whether an investment group including Limbaugh should be able to buy the St. Louis Rams; in his column today, Burwell suggested it didn’t really matter if the quote was a “fabrication.”

So what are we left with? Well, essentially, I think we just threw a deck chair off the Titanic. There is still a huge pile of polarizing, bigoted debris stacked up on the deck of the good ship Limbaugh that he can't deny or even remotely distance himself from.

That doesn’t sound very contrite for a writer who jump-started a nasty round of character assassination with a quote that his own newspaper says needs further “research” to confirm.

UPDATE: We have some video of the attack.  It appears that it is members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) doing at least some of the dirty work.

But it's conservatives who engage in violence and hate speech, right?

The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting that one of their own, reporter Jake Wagman, was one of six people arrested in connection with the beating of a conservative activist outside of a town hall forum held by Democrat Congressman Russ Carnahan.  

According to Dawn Majors, a Post-Dispatch photojournalist who witnessed everything unfold, an officer said that Wagman had been "interfering."

From the article:

Kenneth Gladney, a 38-year-old conservative activist from St. Louis, said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he handed out yellow flags with “Don't tread on me” printed on them. He spoke to the Post-Dispatch from the emergency room of the St. John's Mercy Medical Center, where he said he was waiting to be treated for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face that he suffered in the attack. Gladney, who is black, said one of his attackers, also a black man, used a racial slur against him before the attack started.

"It just seems there's no freedom of speech without being attacked," he said.

That is some list of injuries, which means it must have been some beating.  And Gladney says he was attacked by "some of those arrested,"  which means there were probably more in the mob than just that.

And let us not overlook nor forget the racial slur Gladney additionally endured.

More from the article:

Should the voters in St. Louis feel guilty? If you're a CNN viewer, you would assume so. 

A segment that aired on CNN's March 29 "State of the Union" looked at some of the cutbacks that will go in effect on March 30 to the St. Louis bus and light rail systems.

"Metro faces a more than $50 million budget gap, two dozen bus routes are being eliminated, others shortened or put on less frequent schedules," host John King said. "Light rail is also being cut back, leaving riders in the working class community surrounding St. Louis like Darren Berryl, asking, why me?"

Four days before the infamous "lipstick on a pig" remark by Sen. Obama, Gov. Sarah Palin was depicted as the lipstick-wearing porcine embodiment of "Federal Budget Earmarks" in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch cartoon by R.J. Matson (see picture at right; h/t tipster Chuck Hodges).

Yesterday NewsBusters contributor Warner Todd Huston noted that Obama's remarks sounded remarkably similar to a speech bubble in that ran in a Tom Toles cartoon the same day, September 5, in the Washington Post.

It's not too far-fetched to say Team Obama is cribbing his stump speech laugh lines from the liberal funnies.