It's Just Entertaiment

Rush Limbaugh wanted to buy a 2% ownership interest in the Rams. This met with a lot of sound & fury about whether he should be allowed to.

I actually could care less. But I did hear several talking heads, some who know him, make the point that he's just an entertainer. He says controversial things to create controversy. The argument goes that you can't hold him to the same standard as a journalist because his job is to get ratings, not report facts. He's just spouting off controversial opinions to get ratings.

A similar argument is deployed to defend Hannity and O'Rielly as well.

I call Bullshit. The problem isn't that these guys spout off controvesial opinions. It's that they make shit up and claim them as facts. For example, claiming that only 5 million people are without healthcare isn't true. It's a made up statistic.

Now the response to that is you can get statistics to say anything you want. Actually, no you can't. You can, of course, make shit up and call it a statistic (I am looking at you APC!) but that's called lying.

Looking at it another way.. if other talk show hosts, like say sports guys, started claiming that all the Rams were socialists pedophiles who cheated on their taxes I am pretty sure they would get fired. Cause that's not an opinion. That's... wait for it... making shit up. And it would be a lie.

Just saying.