Brent Bozell’s refusal to criticize Rush’s Limbaugh’s misogynistic attacks on Sandra Fluke in anything but the most tepid terms possible is not just a Limbaugh-centric issue.
At February’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Cal Thomas declared that MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow “is the best argument in favor of her parents using contraception.” The MRC apparently didn’t think that opinion was in any way controversial, for no mention of it whatsoever can be found on any of the MRC websites, including NewsBusters. (Granted, the MRC may have been too busy pulling out of CPAC in a snit over Bozell being denied the prime speaking slot he thought he deserved to notice.)
But the MRC managed to take this memory-hole approach to a surprising extreme.
Thomas penned a Feb. 16 column in which he offered a full, unequivocal and abject apology to Maddow, stating: “One of the principles in which I believe is not to engage in name-calling; which, to my shame, I did. … I had embarrassed myself and was a bad example to those who read my column and expect better from me.” In short, it was the kind of apology Bozell apparently thinks Limbaugh offered to Fluke but in reality has not.
NewsBusters carries an archive of Thomas’ columns. His Feb. 16 column is curiously absent.
Why would the MRC want to flush this incident down the memory hole? After all, Thomas exhibited the model of how one apologizes for making ugly remarks in public — a model Limbaugh has thus far chosen not to follow.
Does Bozell think it’s weakness for conservatives to apologize when they’ve clearly done wrong? Given his refusal to speak out on Limbaugh and his utter silence on Thomas, apparently so.
This is just another example of Bozell’s moral cowardice when it comes to his fellow conservatives.