Conservative talk radio king Rush Limbaugh sat down for a lengthy TV interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity recently, and a controversy erupted before that hour-long interview had even been completed.
The day after the interview aired, Limbaugh revealed that a certain descriptive word he’d used while speaking about Christine Blasey Ford had been instantly edited out of the conversation by Fox News, an edit he had alluded to during the interview. On Friday’s radio program, Limbaugh explained, “‘Ballsy’ Ford … By the way, that’s what Fox edited out.”
A “Ballsy” edit
“‘Ballsy’ Ford. I hear people every day on Fox say ‘p***,’ ‘b****,’ and this kind of stuff,” Limbaugh said. “They wouldn’t let me say ‘balls.’”
“I hear hosts on Fox say they are ticked off, except they don’t say ‘ticked.’ I hear them use the b**** word. Not talking about people, but arguing and being in kind of a mood,” he continued.
“But ‘Ballsy’ Ford crossed a little bit of a line. No big deal. I just found it fascinating and people were asking me what it was that got bleeped out. That was it,” added Limbaugh.
Reference to Christine Blasey Ford
Reading through a full transcript of the interview, it is unclear where exactly in the interview the subtle edit occurred, as Limbaugh spoke about Ford’s accusation and Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation process on a handful of different occasions in multiple segments of the interview.
Odds are, however, that the surreptitious edit occurred in the first segment, when Limbaugh was discussing the impact of the Kavanaugh situation on voters.
As he began to speak Ford’s name, the transcript cut off Limbaugh’s remark — ostensibly because of an interruption by Hannity — right after Limbaugh said, “Christine –.”
Indeed, Limbaugh alluded to as much in the final segment of the interview — as part of a discussion about Hannity urging him to do a one-hour TV show from time to time — when he joked, “There’s already a controversy. Something I said earlier has already been wiped.”
“You will never know, folks, because it’s not deemed appropriate. It was not profanity, it was not offensive, but it has been wiped,” he added mysteriously.
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Except, now we all do know, because Limbaugh himself shared what the edited word had been.
It truly is inexplicable why Fox News would decide to edit “ballsy” when other words that could be deemed equally or more offensive are allowed to be said on air, unless it was done out of overly sensitive concern for the feelings of Ford and how the liberal media might misconstrue or take out of context what had been said about her … which sadly holds some validity as a concern in this day and age, thanks to the predominant “feelings over facts” mindset of many liberals.