FATS GETS FOOLED AGAIN AND SO DO HIS LISTENERS

I know it's almost impossible to discredit Rush Limbaugh but it is a great sign that a major news outlet points out that "El Rushbo" was taken in by an Internet hoax.

Limbaugh Taken In: The Judge Was Not Loaded for Bear
By KEVIN SACK
Published: September 15, 2010

PENSACOLA, Fla. — Anyone listening to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show Tuesday could be forgiven for thinking that Judge Roger Vinson has the federal government dead in his sights.

Mr. Limbaugh spent some time profiling Judge Vinson, a senior judge on the Federal District Court in Pensacola, who had just announced he would allow a legal challenge to the new health care law to advance to a full hearing. The conservative radio host informed his listeners that the judge was an avid hunter and amateur taxidermist who once killed three brown bears and mounted their heads over his courtroom door to “instill the fear of God into the accused.”

“This,” Mr. Limbaugh said, “would not be good news” for liberal supporters of the health law.

But, in fact, Judge Vinson has never shot anything other than a water moccasin (last Saturday, at his weekend cabin), is not a taxidermist and, as president of the American Camellia Society, is far more familiar with Camellia reticulata than with Ursus arctos.

Apparently, Mr. Limbaugh had fallen prey to an Internet hoax.

Just like Limbaugh, his staff doesn't admit to making a mistake:

Kit Carson, a spokesman for Mr. Limbaugh, said a staff researcher had found the information in an article on the Pensacola newspaper’s Web site, and not on Wikipedia. But Ginny Graybiel, the paper’s managing editor, said it had never published such material.