Friday, April 28, 2006
Rush Arrested
Rush was arrested in Palm Beach County, FL today on prescription fraud charges according to the FNC. He was later released on $3000 bond from the Palm Beach County jail. His attorney said that Rush will only face this one charge and that it will be dropped after 18 months on the condition that manifest that he has not become readdicted. Rush also agreed to pay $30,000 to the State of FL to defray the costs of the investigation.
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6 comments:
James, you crack me up. Nice little headline manipulation to get our attention.
Joseph, I'm not quite sure what you are referring to as headline manipulation. According to "Breaking News" on FNC, Rush was so arrested. Today, a pundit on FNC indicated that he turned himself in to be charged. Whether a subtle distinction in that regard exists in is not known by me. Nevertheless, I'm happy that his legal problems seem to be well on their way to a positive resolution: too bad his political eminence made him an attractive target to his ideological enemies.
While legally accurate, I think there is a distinction to be made between turning yourself in on a charge and the police arresting him. The way MSNBC wrote their headline, the reader would think that the Florida police had Rush handcuffed and pinned to the ground.
Others noticed the "Rush Arrested" headlines, too, most notably the great Maja Rushie <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_050106/content/rushstatement050106.guest.html">himself</a>:
"I was over there for about an hour, got back to the office here around 5:15 or 5:30, turned on the news, and there's this news: "Rush Limbaugh Arrested on Drug Fraud!" I said, "Where in the world did this come from?" Because, you know, the word "arrested," this is semantics. When you hear the word "arrested," you think cops show up with a paddy wagon with shackles and leg irons and handcuffs and take me, resisting, out the door; file me into jail and so forth.
None of that happened. "
Thanks, Joseph, for Rush's response. "Arrest" in the context of Rush's situation seems to exemplify the difference between denotation (the actual definition) and connotation (the message conveyed therewith). As we know, the punditry, media, and PR firms are well versed in utilizing the sematics to spin.
Tonight O'Reilly interviewed Judge Napolitano in re the AP's headlines about Rush's arrest. Judge N. said that Rush was under arrest but that he was not forcibly arrested. He added that the connotation was false. I fully agree that the connotation was misleading but the denotation was not (as I understand it). As I mentioned in an earlier post, FNC's "Breaking News" indicated that Rush was arrested: only later did FNC clarify the circumstances thereof.
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