Rush Limbaugh continued to wade into the dangerous waters of race by discussing comments Eric Holder made regarding the ongoing controversy involving the New Black Panther voter intimidation case. Limbaugh was angry with accusations Holder made that the continued focus on the case demeaned his “people.” In Limbaugh’s rant he did, however, get a fact wrong.
The segment stemmed from a Politico article entitled “Eric Holder: Black Panther case focus demeans ‘my people.'” Limbaugh quoted this section:
“The Attorney General seemed to take personal offense at a comment Culberson read in which former Democratic activist Bartle Bull called the incident the most serious act of voter intimidation he had witnessed in his career.
‘Think about that,’ Holder said. ‘When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, to compare what people subjected to that with what happened in Philadelphia, which was inappropriate….to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line for my people,’ said Holder, who is black.”
Limbaugh angrily repeated that Bull only said his career, not in history and then implied that Holder was playing “the race card” in bringing up the voter suppression of the 60s. However, Holder isn’t the first to bring it up. While Politico said “career” it was actually Bull who brought up that situation in his sworn statement (warning: PDF) about the 2008 event. Here’s the quote in question:
“To me, the presence and behavior of the two uniformed men was an outrageous affront to American democracy and the rights of voters to participate in an election without fear. It would qualify as the most blatant form of voter intimidation I have encountered in my life in political campaigns in many states, even going back to the work I did in Mississippi in the 1960’s.”
The work he refers to is his work on black voting rights which he had brought up a few minutes earlier as proof of his expertise in the matter.
Limbaugh had better reason to attack Charlie Rangel. Limbaugh took him to task for comparing the abolishing of collective bargaining to slavery. Now that is a situation where accusations of the Atrocity Card (similar to the Race Card) actually fit. Like Nazi comparisons, bringing up slavery to win an argument isn’t exactly something that should be done lightly.
Listen to the audio from Limbaugh’s show below:
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