SHUCK AND JIVE: Limbaugh Plays Homonym Card; BET Prez Steps Over Obama And Fetches For Clintons

RUSH LIMBAUGH: “…Obama is holding his own against both of them – doing more than his share of the ‘spade’ work. Maybe even gaining ground at the moment. Using not only the spade ladies and gentleman—that when he finishes with the ‘spade’ in the garden of corruption planted by the Clinton’s, he turns to the ‘hoe.’ And so the spade work and his expertise using a hoe.” [via CROOKSANDLIARS]

PREVIOUSLY: Ever Notice How No Matter What Rush Limbaugh Is Talking About — Iraq, Football, Yummy Oxycontin — It Always Seems To Come Down To ‘How Scary Black People Are’?

WASHINGTON POST: Limbaugh was using prodigious amounts of the painkillers, according to the documents. In May 2003, a prescription for 50 tablets of Lorcet was filled for Limbaugh at the Zitomer Pharmacy on Madison Avenue in New York. The tablets were to be taken at a rate of two a day, and at that pace the prescription should have lasted 25 days. Three days later, a prescription was filled for Limbaugh at the same pharmacy for another 50 tablets. A third prescription for 96 tablets of Norco was filled about the same time at the Lewis Pharmacy in Palm Beach, according to the court documents.

ABC NEWS: Speaking in Columbia, S.C., BET founder Bob Johnson was introducing Clinton and made a veiled swipe at Barack Obama’s past drug use. “I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won’t say what he was doing but he said it in his book.” MORE

BOSSIP: BET’s Robert Johnson paid over a $1 billion to his wife Sheila in their divorce case…Ms. Johnson went on to hook up with the judge who awarded her a billion.

NEWSWEEK: At a time when blacks and others are decrying poor minority representation on mainstream TV, BET offers an alternative. For nearly two decades, it’s been the only network exclusively aimed at black America. Founded and owned by former congressional press secretary Robert Johnson, 53, BET has grown from a fledgling netlet into an empire valued at $1.5 billion that reaches 90 percent of black cable households. But despite the lack of color elsewhere on TV, BET’s viewers and employees have become increasingly inclined to scrutinize the network–and to dislike what they see. Many say they’re turned off by what they consider outmoded, even offensive, programming, while current and former employees charge that the network takes advantage of its position as “the only game in town” to push black talent into unfavorable contracts and low-paying gigs. MORE

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WASHINGTON POST: The most recent example of the old guard’s apparent aversion to Obama was Andrew Young’s febrile YouTube ramblings about Bill Clinton being “every bit as black as Barack Obama” and his armchair speculation that Clinton had probably bedded more black women during his lifetime than the senator from Illinois — as if racial identity could be transmitted like an STD. This could be dismissed as a random instance of a politician speaking out of turn were it not part of an ongoing pattern.