And Now, to Discuss Police Killings: Rush Limbaugh?

I don’t make a habit of watching Fox News Sunday, but I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the description of this week’s show (12/7/14): “Rush Limbaugh talks race relations.”

As in, you know, that Rush Limbaugh—the one who resigned from an ESPN football commentary gig in 2003 for claiming that Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated because “the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.” And the guy who once quipped, “Have you ever noticed how all newspaper composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?” And also this one: “The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.”

Still, it had been a few years since he’d been on the Fox Sunday broadcast, so host Chris Wallace—who prefaced one question with “I ask this with all due respect, we’re friends”—invited the far-right radio host to talk about police violence, Ferguson and Eric Garner.

In the midst of this very long segment, Limbaugh made a startling claim about attorney general Eric Holder’s response to the killing of Michael Brown:

WALLACE: But you have on your program compared Holder to the terror group Hamas and Israel, when he says that the police should not be an occupying force. Do you—

LIMBAUGH: Well—

WALLACE: How do you—

LIMBAUGH: That’s how they talk.

WALLACE: Let me just ask my question. This will work better if I ask my question.

LIMBAUGH: OK.

WALLACE: Do you think there is a legitimate basis for federal civil rights investigation?

 LIMBAUGH: Look, Eric Holder is the one who uses the word or the phrase “occupying force” to describe the New York PD.

That’s the way this regime talks about Israel. I’m not putting these words in their mouth. I’m not the one who’s saying them. But I do think we have to honestly interpret and analyze and honestly hear what they are saying.

Eric Holder (cc photo: US Embassy New Zealand)

In that spirit of honesty, we might want to point out that Eric Holder did not say the New York Police Department was an occupying force. Limbaugh is totally mischaracterizing comments Holder made during a speech in Atlanta (12/1/14) that were not at all about New York.

Like you, I understand that the need for this trust was made clear in the wake of the intense public reaction to last week’s grand jury announcement.  But the problems we must confront are not only found in Ferguson.  The issues raised in Missouri are not unique to that state or that small city.  We are dealing with concerns that are truly national in scope and that threaten the entire nation.  Broadly speaking, without mutual understanding between citizens—whose rights must be respected—and law enforcement officers—who make tremendous and often unheralded personal sacrifices every day to preserve public safety—there can be no meaningful progress.  Our police officers cannot be, and cannot be seen as, an occupying force disconnected from the communities they serve.  Bonds that have been broken must be restored.  Bonds that never existed must now be created.

Holder is quite plainly saying that there must be better relations between citizens and police—people he characterizes as making “tremendous and often unheralded personal sacrifices every day.”

This is a useful reminder—one that media outlets other than Fox have figured out—that Rush Limbaugh is not a good authority on anything.