Columnist argues on false premise
In his Oct. 19 column, “Bid team did right thing in dropping Limbaugh,” Kia Makarechi had a few good points in which he praised Limbaugh’s failed attempt at an NFL team purchase. The problem is that Makarechi missed the mark with a false premise from the start.
Limbaugh didn’t lose the NFL bid becaues of what he said; he lost the bid because of quotes his detractors (media and race baiters) made up.
Many news sources used “quotes” from Limbaugh during a public relations blitz but failed to do the smallest amount to verify the accuracy of those quotes. A check would have shown his “slavery” quote was attributed to a bogus quote in a book and Web page postings.
The two partial quotes Makarechi cited were true, but they weren’t the quotes used by the blowhards during the bid controversy. Limbaugh’s show is transcribed daily and available on podcast, but that is too much research for a media that will go through the trouble to fact check a recent Saturday Night Live skit.
How about this analogy: I don’t agree with his views, so I write that Makarechi hates bunnies and Gandhi. These “facts” then prevent him from buying his home. Stupid example, but it makes as much sense as this incident. Is universal agreement the new standard for a private citizen making purchases in the United States of America?
Kenneth Shigemitsu
Programmer analyst
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center