Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center had a major sad when Rush Limbaugh died -- so much so, it loudly complained that his offensive right-wing schtick was being criticized and almost completely censored that one time he call a college student a "slut" because she took birth control. Jeffrey Lord cranked up the waterworks one final time in his Oct. 29 MRC column:
It was, of course, only a matter of time.
With his passing in February of this year, there would inevitably be a last issue of Rush Limbaugh’s monthly magazine – The Limbaugh Letter. That issue has just arrived in my mail box – not the electronic one but the snail mail one as the magazine was indeed quite physical.
As a subscriber to Rush 24/7, I was a subscriber to The Limbaugh Letter. It would arrive in the mail every month like clockwork, with Rush’s latest musings for the magazine written in about 16 concise pages.
[...]
The last, freshly arrived issue dated October of 2021 features a tribute to Rush himself, aptly titled “Forever Dittos, Rush!” The piece is indeed a wonderful tribute, filled with the indelible memories of Rush that are shared by so many millions of his fans.
Among the memories is this quite accurate assessment of just why so many Americans loved Rush. It says: “You not only spoke for us, you woke us up and connected us to each other as an enormous force.” Exactly.
Lord went on to gush:
The Limbaugh Letter was a monthly treasure trove of information and spot on analysis.
Leafing through my collection of back issues the breadth of topics featured amaze. Rush on the NFL, Kim Jong Un and North Korea, and, memorably, “Democrats are exposing themselves as the wacko-radical America-hating Marxists they really are.”
In another issue, the Parkland, Florida killing of 14 kids and three teachers at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school is discussed with a focus on the startling fact that the killer, teenager Nikolas Cruz, had 39 police visits to his home by police - but was never arrested. Why? Because of a quite deliberate Obama policy called the PROMISE - Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Supports & Education program. Had Cruz been arrested just once for disorderly conduct, the Letter points out, it would have raised a red flag when he bought a firearm.
But Limbaugh's story about Cruz isn't true. First of all, the PROMISE programa wasn't an "Obama policy" -- while the program launched in that school district while Obama was in the White House, no federal departments or agencies, let alone Obama himself, were involved in its creation.
Second of all: A commission created to investigate the Parkland shooting found that while Cruz was referred to the program, there's no evidence he ever took part in it. As a local sheriff put it:
"The PROMISE program didn't fail for Cruz," Pinellas sheriff and commission chairman Bob Gualtieri told reporters. "It would never in any way, shape, form, would've affected his ability to buy that AR-15, to buy the shotguns, to buy anything else, to possess them."
He added: "It's completely irrelevant, it's a rabbit hole, it's a red herring, it's immaterial, and that's why we're taking it off the table. And the community needs to know that that has nothing to do with what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14."
How fitting that one of the strongest memories Lord has about Limbaugh is based on a lie.
