KAUS CATCHES FATS!!!

I referred to this below and then I learned that I never got around to blogging about this but it deserves to be a classic anecdote about Fats.

kausfiles: A mostly political Weblog.
Friday, May 13, 2005

Sorry, Rush! The Minute Man's blog tipped me off to a Kenneth Starr appearance on Nightline last month, in which Starr seems to say flat out he opposes changing Senate Rule 22 on filibusters--the so called "nuclear option."

Rush Limbaugh assured his listeners this week that Starr was "on the same page" as other Republicans. Doesn't look like it, Rush!

*** Update: Rush, Dowdifier! I have now joined "Rush 24/7"--only $49.95--and obtained a transcript of Limbaugh's anti-CBS spiel ("CBS Lied: Ken Starr Taken Out of Context"). Limbaugh said:

Ken Starr is on the right page. He's on the same page as everybody else about this but CBS sought to purposely take his sound bite out of context, and apply it to the nuclear option. Here it is again. This is the sound bite. It's audio sound bite 22, Mike, and it is Ken Starr as CBS presented him talking about the Republicans' attempt to use the nuclear option.

STARR: This is a radical, radical departure from our history and from our traditions, and it amounts to an assault on the judicial branch of government. It may prove to have the kind of long term boomerang effect, damage on the institution of the Senate that thoughtful senators may come to regret.

Not only is Starr not on the same page as other Republicans when it comes to the nuclear option, but Limbaugh appears to have run the two Starr quotes together as if they came right after each other, which has the effect of making CBS look worse than an accurate presentation would.. When people on the left do that, people on the right call it "Dowdification," no? ... [Update: I've now actually listened to the Limbaugh broadcast. It's indeed deceptive the way the two sentences are spliced together as if they were billed and broadcast by CBS as a single "sound bite" discussing the "nuclear option." (That's the way CBS characterized the second sentence, remember, but not the first. More important, Starr's I-wasn't-talking-about-the-nuclear-option defense applies to the first sentence but not the second sentence.) ... In the Limbaugh mash-up version, there's a subtle difference in tone between the first sentence and the second sentence, but too subtle to alert most listeners to the edit.] ...