The Rush Limbaugh referendum
Michelle Malkin

Brian Maloney has a thorough round-up on the Rush Limbaugh vs. Michael J. Fox battle.

As expected, the MSM is going bananas over Limbaugh's pointed commentary. Liberal celebrities stride onto the political stage with an imperial sense of entitlement--expecting to fling barbed criticism at their opponents while invoking immunity against any tough scrutiny of their positions or motives. ...

... Two related parodies if you haven't already seen them yet...

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Michael J. Fox on CBS and the goo of victimhood
The Anchoress -- writing at Captain's Quarters

Michael J. Fox is going to do a couple of minutes with Katie Couric this evening on the CBS Evening News. In considering what that will be like, I realize that 30-minute broadcast news shows are essentially pointless. In the space of a few minutes, Couric cannot be more penetrating than a prop knife, and between greetings, sympathetic murmurings and a background briefing to get viewers up to speed (and time to thwack the deserving Rush Limbaugh) there will be no time to ask a question that someone really needs to ask Mr. Fox:

If your ads are not meant merely to generally paint Republicans as heartless science-hating bastards content to see you suffer, why did you make an ad similar similar to the McCaskill one for the Maryland race, supporting Cardin...WHO DOES NOT SUPPORT ESCR? ...

... It's very unlikely that the GOP would ever create an ad using - fer instance - Billy Graham, or Muhammed Ali - to rebut the Fox ad, but perhaps it should. Maybe the Rev. Graham should make such an ad and proclaim that he'd rather deal with the cards he has been handed than destroy human embryos - indentifiably beings of human species - to get out of his situation. THAT would certainly enliven things, wouldn't it? Don't you think? ...

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Video: “I could give a damn about Rush Limbaugh’s pity”
Allahpundit

Limbaugh apologized this afternoon after Fox explained that, in fact, he was overmedicated for the McCaskill ad. He repeated that point to Couric, as you’ll see.

I included the bit where he knocked his lavalier off and she had to help him fix it. CBS would have cut something like that from any other interview. Not here.

Hard to say yet if the ad worked for McCaskill, but it sure did work for stem-cell research.

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Meanwhile, somewhere in New York City… Click the image to watch.

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*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 2006.10.26;14:00

My Two Cents On Rush
Ed Morrissey

The Anchoress filled in for me today, and admirably, in two excellent posts; if you haven't read them, then for goodness' sake, start scrolling immediately. On the latest of these, though, I have to take exception with one point, where I think she has inadvertently erred. She had this comment about Rush Limbaugh's commentary on Michael J. Fox:

Like Betsy Newmark, I basically think - from what I've read - that Limbaugh was very foolish in his initial response to the McCaskill ad by Fox. I'm not excusing his bloviating, but I do think I understand why Limbaugh lost it.

Several CQ readers objected to this characterization of Rush's commentary, and I think rightly so. The Anchoress relied on the media's reporting on his commentary, rather than the transcript. Here is what Rush said about Fox:

I must share this. I have gotten a plethora of e-mails from people saying Michael J. Fox has admitted in interviews that he goes off his medication for Parkinson's disease when he appears before Congress or other groups as a means of illustrating the ravages of the disease. So lest there be any misunderstanding, we talked about a half hour ago of the commercial that's running for Claire McCaskill featuring Michael J. Fox on what appears to be when he's off his meds. I have never seen him this way and I stated when I was commenting to you about it that he was either off his medication or acting. He is an actor after all, and started hearing from people, "Oh, no, I've seen him on TV this way, this is how the disease has affected him when he's not on his medications." Then the e-mails started coming in saying he's admitted not to taking them in certain circumstances so as to illustrate how the disease affects people. All of which I understand, and I'm not even critical of that. Parkinson's disease is hideous. ...