Rush slammed after blaming Elizabeth Edwards for affair David Edwards and Nick Juliano

Published: Thursday August 14, 2008





Print This Email This Add this to the litany of shocking and offensive things to have emerged from right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh's mouth: "It just seems to me that [John] Edwards might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk." The popular conservative seemed quite clearly to be blaming Edwards's wife, Elizabeth, who is battling breast cancer, with driving her husband to another woman. Earlier in his nationally syndicated show Tuesday, Limbaugh launched into an extended diatribe on how Elizabeth was "smarter than John Edwards" and implied she was dictating his actions. "In other words, could it be that she doesn't shut up?" he asked before promising, "Now that's as far as I'm going to go." It wasn't. And Limbaugh's later effort to blame Elizabeth earned him substantial scorn Wednesday from liberal commentators and Media Matters. "What better prepubescent dream of genital-waving dominance over all the women in the world, than to blame the intelligence of a woman for her husband's infidelity," MSNBC's Keith Olbermann said on Countdown. "What a pure sentiment to share with the less well recompensed losers who comprise your audience than to dismiss their failures as husbands -- as men, Rush -- on the woman. "I mean even these days three divorces is a lot," Olbermann continued, referring to Limbaugh's own failed adventures with love. "A $38 million salary and the guy can't keep the same woman. Gotta be the woman's fault right?" Olbermann went on to remind Limbaugh that his attacks on Bill Clinton's infidelity coincided with a rise in the former president's approval ratings, that plenty of Republicans have faced their share of bedroom-based blunders, that GOP nominee John McCain admitted his own infidelity after his first wife was in a car accident, and that before blowing the lid off the Edwards scandal the National Enquirer exposed Limbaugh's own pill addiction. Limbaugh's defenders were tough to come by after his latest foot-in-mouth disaster. Former Bush adviser turned Republican talking head Brad Blakeman said the tirade was "indefensible," comparing Limbaugh to shock-jock Howard Stern. "You cannot condone that kind of behavior," Blakeman told Verdict host Dan Abrams. This video is from MSNBC's Countdown and MSNBC's Verdict, broadcast August 13, 2008.

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