Media Ignore Pelosi Nazi Comparison, But come out swinging on Rush

The mainstream media were quick to jump all over conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh when he likened President Barack Obama's healthcare logo to a swastika and compared the Democrats to the Nazis.

They were much quieter about Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's reference to a swastika when she claimed that hecklers at a pro-Obamacare town hall meeting were carrying swastikas.

During her recent visit to a San Francisco hospital, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter asked her whether there is "legitimate grass-roots opposition" to the Democrats' healthcare plan.

"I think they are Astroturf," she responded.

Then she referred to hecklers at a town hall meeting: "They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare."





The Chronicle report on the hospital visit did not report the swastika comment.

Fox News and Newsmax were among the media that did report Pelosi's comment.

But when Limbaugh made similar comments Thursday, he set off a media firestorm.

Limbaugh told his radio audience: "Obama's got a healthcare logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook.

"Now, what are the similarities between the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in Germany? Well, the Nazis were against big business — they hated big business . . . They were insanely, irrationally against pollution . . . They had a whole bunch of make-work projects to keep people working . . . They were for abortion and euthanasia of the undesirables, as we all know, and they were for cradle-to-grave nationalized healthcare."

Limbaugh's remarks got such wide play that, for a time on Thursday, "Obama's healthcare logo" was the No. 1 search term on Google, according to Newsweek. The magazine pointed out that the logo for Obama's Organizing for Healthcare effort incorporates the caduceus, the ancient Greek symbol for medicine.

The Chicago Tribune was among the media attacking Limbaugh for his comments, citing a report that Wednesday's program "couldn't have been angrier, more mendacious, or more venomous" and adding that Thursday's show "surpassed even that for pure divisive poison as Limbaugh played an entire deck of Hitler cards."

The Boston Globe said Limbaugh's remarks were part of "the increasingly vicious war over healthcare," and quoted a Democratic official who said his statement was "as disgusting as it is shocking." The article made no mention of Pelosi's earlier remark about swastikas.

A U.S. News & World Report article called Rush's remarks "mind-numbingly nonsensical," but did not mention Pelosi's comment.

Politico.com quoted a Democratic congressman who asserted that Limbaugh with his remarks has treated Holocaust survivors "with vile contempt."

VIA