Selling a new book, actor Michael J. Fox appeared Monday on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and dismissed Rush Limbaugh as "cartoonish" for his criticism of Fox’s slashing ads for Democrats in the 2006 midterms. After host Jon Stewart suggested Limbaugh’s brain was "diseased," Fox even joked to Stewart that it’s questionable that Limbaugh has a brain. Left out of the cozy, mocking liberal chat was any notion of what Fox actually said in his commercials for Democrats.

"Cartoonish" is a good word for what Fox claimed in a mud-slinging 2006 ad against Sen. Jim Talent, who lost his race. He claimed Talent "opposes expanding stem cell research. Senator Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that gives us a chance for hope." (For more background, see the October 25, 2006 Cyber Alert.) At the time, The Weekly Standard reported one spokesman took the extravagant claim further, claiming that by criminalizing medical research, the anti-cloning legislation would mandate that a cured patient's first steps "out of a wheelchair" would be "into a jail cell."

Stewart walked Fox into a Limbaugh attack by suggesting how he was stunned that Fox’s "motives could be impugned." As if Fox wasn’t doing any impugning of Jim Talent?