NewsBusters and its Media Research Center parent were all to eager to accept Rush Limbaugh’s so-called apology for his three-day denigration of Sandra Fluke by buying his explanation that he was just “illustrat[ing] the absurd with absurdity.” The MRC’s Brent Baker dismissed Limbaugh’s misogyny as nothing more than “a bit of humor.”
As you might imagine given the MRC’s sorry record of double standards, non-conservatives who illustrate the absurd with absurdity don’t get the same break.
In an April 17 NewsBusters post, Josh St. Louis huffs that “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart was being “snarky” in “mocking Fox News for dismissing the Democratic/MSNBC ‘war on women’ meme,” but that he “desecrate[d]” Christianity by saying, after noting that Fox has embraced other wars like the “war on Christmas”: “What can women do to generate the same sense of outrage from Fox as the removal of decorative slightly poisonous holiday plants? Perhaps they could play into the theme? Maybe women could protect their reproductive organs from unwanted medical intrusions with vagina mangers.”
What? Stewart doesn’t get the same credit for absurdity Limbaugh gets?
Nope — St. Louis grouses, “Makes you wonder if Jon Stewart would make the same sort of disgusting ‘jokes’ about Judaism or Islam?”
Apparently, only right-wing radio hosts are allowed to be absurd.