Limbaugh Falls for Wikipedia Hoax

Even though, really, he should know better...
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 16, 2010 7:11 AM CDT
Limbaugh Falls for Wikipedia Hoax
In this photo provided by the Las Vegas News Bureau, radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh speaks during a Miss America news conference at Planet Hollywood Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010.   (AP Photo/Las Vegas News Bureau, Brian Jones)

Even though Rush Limbaugh once said, "Everybody in the world knows you don't believe anything on Wikipedia," he managed to get himself fooled by, yep, a Wikipedia hoax. Limbaugh, speaking Tuesday about the judge who is presiding over a challenge to the president's health care reform, called him an "avid hunter" who intimidated defendants by mounting bear heads around his courtroom. But "I've never killed a bear, and I'm not Davy Crockett," says Judge Roger Vinson—in fact, he's actually more interested in the camellia flower—and Limbaugh appears to have gotten the story from Wikipedia.

Making the story even better, Gawker notes, is the fact that Limbaugh himself was once the target of a similar hoax, in which racist quotes that he never actually said were attributed to him on sister site Wikiquote. One of his reps tells the New York Times Limbaugh got the information about the judge from the Pensacola News Journal, but that paper says it never published any such thing. Wikipedia, however, referred to such a story, supposedly written on June 31, 2003, a date that doesn't even exist. (The reference has since been removed.) For more fun Limbaugh stories, click here.
(More Rush Limbaugh stories.)

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