Rush Limbaugh: Victim of a smear campaign?

Rush Limbaugh is the victim of a vicious smear campaign, said Mark Steyn in National Review. CNN and other media outlets have used the news that Limbaugh was interested in buying the St. Louis Rams football team as an excuse to distribute a bunch of "what appear to be entirely fabricated racist quotes" by the talk-radio powerhouse. Of course, it would be easy to check to see if the "racist soundbites" were real, but that would take some effort.

There are plenty of racist soundbites that Limbaugh has said on the air—take your pick, said Matthew Filipwicz in The Huffington Post. Like the time he likened NFL games to "a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons," or the time he told an African-American caller to "take the bone out of your nose." And don't forget the "racist comments" about quarterback Donovan McNabb that ended Limbaugh's brief stint as an ESPN commentator. (watch Rush Limbaugh blast McNabb in 2003)

Anyone who listens to Rush Limbaugh, said Jeffrey Lord in The American Spectator, knows the "left-wing" stereotype of him is "simply nuts." Liberal journalists won't stop falsely claiming that Limbaugh once said that slavery "had its merits," because they are determined to prevent him from owning an NFL team. It's the same "racial profiling" that every conservative has to deal with, because liberals would rather smear their rivals than engage "on the battlefield of ideas."

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Limbaugh is acting like he's wounded by all the attacks, said Chris Richardson in The Washington Post, but "no doubt the King of Rhetoric and Hyperbole is loving every minute of it." Sure, the NFL owners are saying that Limbaugh isn't welcome in their club. But entertainers thrive on publicity—and "who is everybody talking about right now?"