Exciting new media angle to Koran-burning story: Pastor went to high school with Rush Limbaugh
posted at 5:08 pm on September 10, 2010 by Allahpundit
Via the Radio Equalizer. Had this meme come from anyone else, I’d assume it was a sly joke on how inane guilt-by-association attacks can be. Turns out, though, that it broke big after being retweeted … by Olbermann. So, oh well.
The Cape Central High School (Missouri) website has the perhaps unsurprising coincidence front and center, noting:
“Rush Limbaugh USED to be Cape Girardeau’s most prominent export. One of his classmates from the Central High School Class of 1969 is dominating the news right now: Terry Jones, the Gainesville, FL, preacher who is threatening to hold an ‘International Burn a Koran Day’ on September 11.”…
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann was one of the first to call attention to the Limbaugh/Jones nexus when he posted news of it on Twitter overnight: ” ‘Rev.’ Terry Jones was classmate of none other than Rush Limbaugh (Cape Central class of ’69). Coincidence?”
Among the big-media outlets that have picked up on this thus far: The Washington Post, USA Today, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which at least can claim a local angle. Even conservative Matt Lewis finds it “weirdly secretive” that Limbaugh didn’t mention the connection before. I’m not sure why, though: What ethical issue is raised by failing to disclose that you went to high school with someone 40 years ago? Frankly, given how Limbaugh enjoys baiting the media, I suspect he would have mentioned it had he remembered going to school with Jones. I’m closer to my H.S. years than Rush is and I can’t remember the names of more than four or five classmates; toss in the fact that Jones’s name is extremely common and that he’s no longer located in Missouri and Limbaugh probably blanked on it entirely.
Even so, I’m proud to do my part in circulating this meme, as it serves as a nifty reductio ad absurdum of the sort of media crap that’s routinely tossed at prominent righties to indict them for others’ bad behavior. (Another case in point: Chris Matthews arguing last night on Hardball that Palin’s kinda sorta to blame for Jones’s interest in the Ground Zero mosque even though (a) she publicly called on Jones to stop the Koran-burning, (b) she mentioned the GZM vis-a-vis the Koran-burning only insofar as it’s another example of people having the right to do something they shouldn’t do, and (c) the media made Jones the star he now is precisely because they wanted to connect him to opponents of the GZM.) Exit quotation from Jim Treacher, who’s looking for a little more meat on the guilt-by-assocation bone: “Terry Jones went to school with Rush Limbaugh, which explains it all. Obama sat in Rev. Wright’s church for decades, which explains nothing.”
Update (Ed): You know, I went to high school with actress Lela Rochon (a fact I didn’t know until years after we both had graduated). By this standard, it either makes me smokin’ hot, or her a pudgy middle-aged conservative writer. I’d call that a win-win.
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Sweet. How sweet it is.
Finally, Obama’s chikkinzzz are coming home to roost.
petefrt on May 19, 2013 at 8:22 PM
This.
When you have to plead incompetence to defend against charges of malfeasance, you know you might be in trouble.
petefrt on May 19, 2013 at 8:36 PM
ear relevant…
driguana on May 19, 2013 at 8:59 PM
Flush this lying tudd down the drain with the rest of the Obamacrap.
kemojr on May 19, 2013 at 9:34 PM
This was Dan Pfeiffer’s week in the barrel, like Susan Rice he was given the White House talking points and sent on a mission. He really needs to get copies of these tapes and watch them and see how foolish and unbelievable he looked and sounded. The White House is losing the little credibility it still had by sending these shills out every week trying to do damage control. Community organizers make poor leaders.
savage24 on May 19, 2013 at 9:42 PM
Pfeiffer’s statement that the law is irrelevant because the IRS conduct was “outrageous” and “inexcusable”, tells us all we need to know about this administration.
However, the follow-up should have been, “On what standard do you judge their conduct to be outrageous and inexcusable since the law is apparently not an appropriate standard?” (At least in Pfeiffer’s mind.)
What this comes down to is this: “if the Administrative deems something “outrageous” and “inexcusable,” then it is declared such. As we have seen in so many other areas, if the Administrative deems something to not be “outrageous” and “inexcusable,” then it is declared such.
In their mind, the law is – in fact – irrelevant. That’s what makes this situation so dangerous.
It’s not socialism. It’s worse.
EdmundBurke247 on May 19, 2013 at 10:36 PM
Irrelevant = “What Difference Does It Make?”
jaydee_007 on May 19, 2013 at 10:41 PM
A fitting capstone to Ed’s story about loss-prevention (aka employee theft) and management’s “permission structure” in this post.
(Not to mention the jaw-dropping statements of Eleanor Clift in this one.)
AesopFan on May 19, 2013 at 11:40 PM
I enjoy popcorn and hope it is a long week.
Drill and Fill on May 20, 2013 at 12:41 AM
Hey give Barky a break. He had to get his sorry ass out to Vegas.
tbear44 on May 20, 2013 at 4:49 AM
Of course they sent Pfeiffer out to do the Sunday shows. He was the most senior expendable staff member they had . . .
BigAlSouth on May 20, 2013 at 5:39 AM
Pfeiffer… The guy with the red shirt in the landing party…
Boudica on May 20, 2013 at 5:53 AM
Perfect!
lea on May 20, 2013 at 7:11 AM
Does anybody else remember the campaign in 2008 when Obama defended his lack of administrative experience by saying he was just so smart and tuned in that his instincts were better than experience. Someone needs to dredge up these sound bites and play then with the current line about the government being too large to control and that the White House only knows what it reads in the newspaper.
bartbeast on May 20, 2013 at 8:43 AM
If where the president was during the Benghazi crisis is “irrelevant”, then he wasn’t where one would expect the Commander-in-Chief to be. So, where was he? Was he watching a movie in the residence? Was he bowling? Or was he having a bi-curious outing with his good buddy Reggie Love? If Obama was AWOL, as I suspect he was, it is he who is irrelevant. This entire stinkin’ criminal Obama Regime must go and now!
SpiderMike on May 20, 2013 at 9:31 AM
If this continues all week, it will be ‘O’ himself doing the rounds on the Sunday talk shows – except for Fox, of course. (‘O’ can do everything better than everyone else as he has been known to say.)
He then gets the extra benefit that no one will challenge him like they have begun to do with his minions.
Carnac on May 20, 2013 at 11:00 AM
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