In a Wednesday post on the ComPost blog at The Washington Post, Alexandra Petri — who, according to her blog’s banner, “put the pun in punditry” — criticized conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh because of reports that he was accepting advertising from AshleyMadison.com. This, Petri wrote, means his show is “targeting jerks.”
“So far, he’s picked up AshleyMadison.com, the site where you go to cheat on your wife, and another Web site that is explicitly for sugar-daddy matchmaking,” Petri wrote.
But that’s not true, Limbaugh said Wednesday. And he offered his own critique of Petri.
“Today there’s a more blatant example of what journalism has become and it’s in The Washington Post,” he said.
“There’s just one problem: We’re not running spots or advertising from AshleyMadison.com,” he said. “In fact when we find that they are running on our program in local markets, we call the local affiliate and tell them don’t run these ads in our show. We do not sponsor companies that help people cheat on their spouses. But here it is, in The Washington Post, claiming that we are.”
Limbaugh said Ashley Madison was interested in advertising on his program according to some reports, but reiterated that his program had no interest in accepting it. But he attacked Petri for spreading the misinformation.
“Miss Petri, I don’t know who feeds you your information,” he said. “I have a pretty good guess but you might want to check here because you’ve written something that’s patently false. It’s an out-and-out lie complete with your b-i-itchy opinion in it. And it is untrue. We are not running commercials. We wouldn’t accept commercials. We have reject their offers from outfits that do this kind of thing — provide a way for you to cheat on your spouse.”