You Can't Believe Everything You Read on the Internet

A serious journalist finds an internet piece on Obama's college thesis, reports on it, and his report is picked up by talk radio king Rush Limbaugh. Unfortunately for both, it was a hoax:

A fictitious article that claimed President Barack Obama slammed the Constitution in his college thesis had some people fooled into thinking it was the real thing -- including Rush Limbaugh.

The conservative radio show host reported the story as fact on his show Friday after an obscure blogger, Michael Leeden, picked it up from a satire Web site last week, the New York Daily News reported Sunday. But after Limbaugh found out the piece was a fake, he didn't apologize for his mistake.

Limbaugh sounded off on the false report about a college thesis written by Obama, titled "Aristocracy Reborn." In it, the report claimed, the president criticized the nation's Founding Fathers, the Constitution and the distribution of wealth.

"While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned," read the fake report on Obama's Columbia University thesis, referring to the Constitution. "While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy."

Limbaugh went off on his show.

"So here is who we have as our president of the United States: an anti-constitutionalist man who finds it an obstacle and is finding ways around it on purpose, unconstitutionally," Limbaugh said.

"Much of what he's doing is unconstitutional, and I'm waiting for the lawsuits to be filed by some of these people at some point," he added. "How is that hope and change working out for ya, folks?"

Later in the program, Limbaugh learned the report was a fake and alerted his listeners. But he insisted the fabricated thesis was still in line with what the president thinks, the New York Daily news reported.

"So I shout from the mountaintops: 'It was satire!'" Limbaugh said on the program. "But we know he (Obama) thinks it. Good comedy, to be comedy, must contain an element of truth, and we know how he feels about distribution of wealth."

Leeden has since apologized for making the mistake.

"The hoax/satire was written in August, so it’s not connected to any current event. I came across it on Twitter, read the blog, found it interesting, and posted on it. I failed to notice that one of the tags was 'satire,'" he wrote.

I heard Rush talking about it but didn't mention it on this site because I was doing other things at the time and didn't have a chance to look the article up. I'm glad I missed that one.

All of us have gotten stung by those things at one time or another, and given that Rush was just the victim of false quotes spread about him, I can understand why he might be a little reluctant to instantly apologize for spreading the story.

After all, it's pretty believable given what we know about Obama today.