The Friday Rush: A series of conflicts

Once upon a time, Rush Limbaugh would profess how conservative thinkers like Charles Krauthammer were the bee's knees. He even said, on more than one occasion, that he would consider trading brains with Krauthammer:

LIMBAUGH: As you may remember my having said -- and I'll say it again -- I admire Charles Krauthammer like I admire few people. If I didn't have my own brain, it would be a toss-up as to whether I would want Krauthammer's brain or Justice Scalia's brain. I'm happy with my brain, but if I had to go in there and get a new one, it would be a toss-up between Scalia and Krauthammer.

Rush is definitely on to something, since Krauthammer is leagues ahead of him when it comes to intellect. When he's not trying to position himself as the pre-eminent wingnut hack columnist, Krauthammer is more than capable of stringing together an intelligent thought. Take, for example, his logical approach to the much-ballyhooed recommendation on mammograms by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force:

KRAUTHAMMER: I read the paper and the report that came out of it, and its recommendation is based not on the cost, the financial cost, but on the benefits, the net benefits... So when you have inexact tests and inexact screenings, you have to make a determination and decide how to balance them, and I think the report is a fairly good recommendation. It's not aimed at saving money. It would, but that's not what its recommendations are based on.

One might think Limbaugh, who holds Krauthammer's opinion in such high regard, might have come to a similar conclusion, particularly since Krauthammer is a doctor of psychiatry and has had medical training. But if you know Limbaugh's well-documented intellectual ineptitude like we do, then you probably wouldn't think that. And you'd be correct:

LIMBAUGH: We've all predicted this. There's no question that this is what's going to happen, and this is a leading indicator -- you might even say that we've got death panels going on here.

Since conflict seems to be the theme this week, then we need to discuss Limbaugh's pathetic showdown with Gallup. Rush Limbaugh, always a villain to statisticians everywhere, hunkered over to the latest Gallup poll this week and came up with a brainless attempt to discredit it:

LIMBAUGH: So [Obama's] under 50 percent in two polls now, Quinnipiac and the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll. Gallup has him just teetering on the little teeter-totter at 50 percent and they're doing everything they can -- they're upping the sample of black Americans -- to keep him up at 50 percent in the Gallup poll.

Accusing a polling outfit of cooking its numbers is a serious, serious charge -- one that absolutely requires some modicum of evidence. Adding a racial element, as Rush did, only makes it that much more imperative that you back up the allegation. So what was Limbaugh's basis for claiming that Gallup was "upping the sample of black Americans"? There was no explanation. And hours later, Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport responded to Rush's accusation, swatting it down as a "complete and inexplicable fabrication." The Plum Line's Greg Sargent offered an alternate theory, which is at least as plausible as Rush's charge:

Of course, it's always possible that Gallup has been infiltrated by an army of ACORN workers who are holding Gallup officials hostage in a last ditch effort to game Obama's numbers in this one poll to prevent his presidency from going under.

Quick! Somebody get Andrew Breitbart on the case!

Rush also briefly found himself at odds with Fox News at the end of last week. After Rush declared Sarah Palin's new book "one of the most substantive policy books I've read," that sneaky Carl Cameron over at Fox had the gall to report that the book "largely steers clear of" policy. Perhaps heeding to the all mighty "Campaign" Carl, Rush backed off his original assertion a bit in later discussions of the book. On Tuesday's show, Rush downgraded the book to one with "some substantive policy stuff" in it.

And since Limbaugh's duking it out with everyone else, he might as well be in constant turmoil with himself, too. It's been well-documented that consistency is not Rush's strongest suit (unless you wanted to say he is consistently inconsistent). We caught him in an embarrassing flip-flop a few weeks ago when it came to moral victories in elections. Now Rush has taken to redefining and retasking words based on how they can best be used against the left.

On his show this week, Rush lambasted Attorney General Eric Holder for referring to the Fort Hood shooting as "tragic":

LIMBAUGH: Now some of what Holder said today. He called the shooting at Fort Hood "tragic." No. It was a jihadist massacre. It was a terrorist attack. It was not a tragedy.

As my Media Matters colleague Jeremy Holden pointed out, in that comment, Limbaugh made "clear that a distinction exists between terrorism and tragedy." If that's the case, somebody needs to ask Limbaugh if he holds George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan to the same standard. Bush referred to both the 9-11 attacks and the 2004 Madrid train bombing as a "tragedy," while Reagan described the 1984 Beirut embassy bombing and 1983 Beirut barrack attacks as "tragic."

Additionally, it was only a few months ago when Limbaugh himself described the shooting at the Holocaust Museum as a "tragedy." Holden commented:

You almost get the feeling that Limbaugh's distinctions have more to do with how the words can be used to attack the Obama administration and "the American left."

Meanwhile, that principle also holds true for Limbaugh if the subject is email hacking. Back during the '08 campaign, Limbaugh rightfully called foul when Sarah Palin's personal email account was hacked.

However, on today's show, Limbaugh touted an article reporting that hackers had apparently stolen "hundreds of emails and documents" from the UK's Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Not only did Rush not appear to display any sense of outrage at the likely crime that took place, he also falsely claimed that the emails contained proof that global warming is "made up." As much as Rush wants it to be so, the emails are no smoking gun that global warming is entirely made up.

But that's The Friday Rush, where double standards and absolute inanity are commonplace.