Key to understanding if Hands-up jumped the gun with Rush Limbaugh is Limbaugh’s claim that he was only speaking of one particular fellow when he decried phony soldiers who oppose the war, one Jesse Macbeth, who is, even to a subscriber to Mother Jones, a phony soldier.

Now, Media Matters, started by Hilary Clinton, claims “proof” that Rush Limbaugh only released an edited version of his comments, and that his unedited comments make it clear that he cast his “phony soldier” net much wider. Here is Media Matters article.

Now, I am going to have to ask some readers to help me out. Because as I read the Media Matters article, the excerpt edited out of Limbaugh’s on-air appearance had nothing to do with the “phony soldiers” quote.

It is common practice to edit out irrelevant asides in broadcast journalism. We viewers and listeners hope the journalist has indeed ensured the deleted material is irrelevant. Media Matters, in publishing the edited portion, seems to merely confirm that it was indeed irrelevant.

Can anyone offer any theories how the edited portion had anything to do with Rush’s calling Macbeth a “phony soldier”?

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