Rush Limbaugh Surprise Guest at MRC Dinner

NewsMax.com's Wes Vernon reports that top radio talker Rush Limbaugh wowed the Media Research Center with a surprise appearance at yesterday's awards ceremony in Washington, D.C.

He was not on the program, but the audience in a huge hotel ballroom knew Rush Limbaugh was about to appear on stage when they heard his familiar radio theme song.

The occasion was the Media Research Center’s annual Dishonor Awards, held each year to spotlight grossly biased, inaccurate and downright wacky statements by the so-called "mainstream media," or "partisan media," as the famous talker prefers to call them.

Limbaugh castigated the elite media regarding a huge example of bias just within the last few days.

Taking note of the arrest of accused Saddam spy Susan Lindauer, Rush recalled that her resume includes four Democrat officeholders and several jobs with "the partisan media."

"And all they could emphasize was that she was something like the 13th cousin of [White House aide Andy Card]," he lamented, "even though Card and Lindauer hadn’t seen each other in years."

What set him off on the "partisan media" recently, Rush said, was the way South Florida news outlets had treated his well-publicized case where a Democrat prosecutor is singling him out on charges of "doctor shopping" in his pursuit of painkillers - the result of a years-long back pain problem.

Referring to the Palm Beach Post as the "newsletter" for Palm Beach prosecutors, the man regarded as a broadcast icon by 20 million-plus listeners revealed an "editorial" meeting he had with the newspaper editors.

He complained that other prominent figures in the area had been given a pass when they became reliant on painkillers, while the prosecutor went after him, largely as a result of e-mails received from Rush-haters. He cited reports from conservative news sources and interviews his lawyer had had with Sean Hannity and Joe Scarborough.

"We don’t recognize the partisan media," the editors responded.

By stubbornly refusing to recognize any news source other than those blessed by the liberal establishment, Limbaugh said, the editors were in essence regurgitating what has been heard in elitist newsrooms for years: "Facts don’t matter."

Henceforth, said the top talker, he will not acknowledge that these establishment outlets are "mainstream," a concession conservatives have been willing to make until now.

They are, he told his wildly cheering audience, "the partisan media."

"Up until the last 15 or 20 years, they had 'a virtual monopoly' on deciding what is and what is not 'news,'" he explained.

President Bush, according to Limbaugh, has found out that there is little point in trying to "get along with them. They hate his guts," even more than they hated Reagan, "and that is saying something."

The Democrats, the surprise guest proclaimed, "care more about whether Europeans like them than they care about terrorists who want to kill us."

And don’t let them tell you they're compassionate, he warned. "Just try disagreeing with them and see how far you get."

In the world of the left, Rush believes, politics is about seeking power "to rule other people," whereas conservatives seek to "give power back to the people."

In truth, he added, "they’re losing influence and audience. But we’re gaining." And they can’t stand that.

One more thing, Limbaugh added, "if you notice [media] bias, millions of others notice it too. [Disenchantment with the partisan media] is wider than you know."

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