Fox News Continues Rush Rehabilitation

For the second time in a week, Fox host Greta Van Susteren dedicated the full hour of her show, On The Record, to an interview with controversial radio host Rush Limbaugh. The hour long interview was little more than a platform for Limbaugh to ingratiate himself with the Fox audience while completely ignoring his recent controversies and the revelations of his current contractual problems with Cumulus radio.

On July 28, Politico reported that Cumulus Media, “the second-biggest broadcaster in the country,” is on the verge of dropping Limbaugh from its 40 stations by the end of the year.  The move comes after a year of advertisers fleeing his show following a multi-day attack on then-law student Sandra Fluke.

More recently Limbaugh was widely criticized for his remarks on race in the wake of the “not guilty” verdict in the murder trial of George Zimmerman.

On the July 16 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh claimed that he could say “Nigga' with an a” because “it's not racist.” A week later Limbaugh declared “If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it's Caucasians.” “It's time for all this white guilt to end,” Limbaugh said.

Although Van Susteren asked Limbaugh for his thoughts on the trial, she failed to mention his recent inflammatory comments.

On the August 2 edition of her show, Van Susteren once again asked softball questions and offered Limbaugh a platform to attack President Obama, leftists, feminists, and the welfare state. The interview consisted of questions such as: “Why is there no enthusiasm to go after waste and fraud?”, “Why do you do your job?”, and “Twitter - what do you think of it?” 

This was the fourth time a Limbaugh interview has aired on Fox News in the past month after only three interviews the previous three years.