As the link you set up shows, Limbaugh has made plenty of remarks that would reasonably attract criticism. I had never seen or heard the slavery comment before and found it over the top, even for Limbaugh, whose track record for fidelity to fact is littered with remarks that do not stand up to scrutiny.

The deeper issue is that we live in a society where all sorts of falsehoods have become facts (read Farhad Manjoo’s excellent ad provocative book True Enough, which I reviewed without any criticism (which vexed at least one reader) at:

http://www.cjr.org/review/my_facts_your_facts.php?page=all

Whether line has a reputation for strict fidelity to fact or not, fabrications damage the public discourse and the authenticity of quotes need to be run down.

One of the problems with news organizations being so pinched is that something has to give — and part of that something is the money and time to ferret out, check and cross check quotes.

The St Louis newspaper web site that started your interest has posted an editor’s note saying it is pursuing the provenance of the quotes in the book.

You make an excellent point regarding my not having investigated far enough into the source of the Huberman quote. I freely admit that due to time constraints, I haven’t yet given a complete investigation into the source of Mr. Huberman’s quotes. I fully intend to follow up this weekend. As to my lackness in doing so:

I conceded, in my post, that it’s possible the quote COULD be accurate (even though I’m skeptical). Given the fact that the Post-Dispatch itself issued an addendum to Burwell’s column, it seems that if the quotation is easily traceable, a major news organization (and one with the storied history of the Post) shouldn’t have any trouble providing a citation. The problem is, in my opinion, that such a quote wasn’t fully vetted before being published.

Other news organizations have since reported that Huberman cites Media Matters. The book allegedly lists several quotes and provides a footnote directing people to Media Matters via this link: http://mediamatters.org/research/200405020008
However, investigation of this link does not reveal the quote in question. Until I get a chance to look at the book myself, I won’t be able to verify whether or not this specific link is indeed what Huberman cites as the source, but I assure you that I will have that information before the weekend is out. Thank you for pointing it out, as I admit that waiting until I had done all within my power to track the source of the quote would have been the best course of action. I’m not a journalist, but I do want the information I present here to be accurate to the best of my knowledge.

But your post fails to resolve because you stopped reporting before you got to the answer.

You attack the cited source (the author Huberman) instead of checking his source to establish if he really has one, got it wrong or made it up.

So what does the Huberman book cite, if anything, as its source for the “slavery” quote? The quote appears on p. 232 of his book, but that page and the index are not available at Amazon’s look inside feature.

Given the subject of your post, following the trail to wherever it ends (and that may mean hunting down any source Huberman cites) is basic…..

Please finish the work you started.

And if the liberal states all left, that would be great. We wouldn’t castigate them, we would all rejoice. Let them go run their own country into the ground.

Besides, you live in Texas, so I don’t know what you are complaining about…you should be proud to be part of such an independent, anti-fed state. Some day soon i hope to be joining you down there, and then I’ll teach you how to truly hate the government.