Neutered

By GottaLaff

Saturday night on CNN's D.L. Hughely show, Michael Steele called Rush Limbaugh an "entertainer", "incendiary", and... well, see for yourself:

Steele told CNN host D.L. Hughley in an interview aired Saturday night: “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh — his whole thing is entertainment. He has this incendiary — yes, it's ugly.”

In response, Oxy Limpdong said that Steele "bit on the bait" and came down hard on him. Awww, poor Oxy. I'm sure if he's hurting, he can find a pill for that in his enormous stash. But anyway...

Guess which one of these two clowns buckled:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.” [...]

“I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking,” Steele said. "It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people … want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not."

“I’m not going to engage these guys and sit back and provide them the popcorn for a fight between me and Rush Limbaugh,” Steele added. “No such thing is going to happen. … I wasn’t trying to slam him or anything.” [...]

In the interview with Politico, Steele called Limbaugh “a very valuable conservative voice for our party.”

“He brings a very important message to the American people to wake up and pay attention to what the administration is doing," Steele said. "Number two, there are those out there who want to look at what he’s saying as incendiary and divisive and ugly. That’s what I was trying to say. It didn’t come out that way. … He does what he does best, which is provoke: He provokes thought, he provokes the left. And they’re clearly the ones who are most excited about him.”

Asked if he planned to apologize, Steele said: “I wasn’t trying to offend anybody. So, yeah, if he’s offended, I’d say: Look, I’m not in the business of hurting people’s feelings here. … My job is to try to bring us all together.”

As Ed Schultz is saying now on MSNBC, Rush is out to build himself up, while David Shuster notes that the party is at odds with itself, and the Dems are the beneficiaries.

Here's what I'm saying: Michael Steele's voice just got an octave higher, and his nose got a lot browner.