One of the easiest ways to measure how flippant Newsweek magazine is when it comes to old-fashioned notions of journalistic objectivity is its writers’ regular MSNBC appearances (and regular fulminations) on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown. On Thursday night, one of the magazine’s British imports, Richard Wolffe, snidely whiplashed Rush Limbaugh as a sacred cow that needs to be slaughtered (at least metaphorically) by the GOP:

Well, what they first of all need to do is to kill some sacred cows here. I mean, that was what actually Michael Steele was there for, and that`s why taking on Rush Limbaugh would have been an impressive statement of where the party now stands. I mean, you know, for President Clinton, it was Sister Souljah. For President Obama, he had to confront Reverend Wright. This is their Reverend Wright. And unless they deal with extreme voices within their own party, within their own movement, they`re not going to reach those independent voters who put President Obama over the top.

We know Richard Wolffe lived in America when the Reverend Wright sermons surfaced, so he knows he’s making a fool of himself to suggest Limbaugh is in Wright’s league. Has Rush blamed the blacks for the AIDS virus? Did he pronounce on the radio that we deserved 9/11? But Wolffe’s bio suggests he was graduating from Oxford in 1992, and may be a little under-educated on what the menacing rapper Sister Souljah had to say about white people deserving to die in an interview published in the May 13, 1992 Washington Post. Due to the controversy, they published a transcript of the exchange about the Los Angeles riots with then-Post writer David Mills:

Q. Was that wise, reasoned action?
A. Yeah, it was wise. I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? You understand what I’m saying? In other words, white people, this government, and that mayor were well aware of the fact that black people were dying every day in Los Angeles under gang violence. So if you’re a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person? Do you think that somebody thinks that white people are better, or above and beyond dying, when they would kill their own kind?
Q. I’m just asking what’s the wisdom in it? What’s the sense in it?
A. It’s rebellion, it’s revenge. You ever heard of Hammurabi’s Code? Eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? It’s revenge. I mean, that seems so simple. I don’t even understand why anybody [would] ask me that question. You take something from me, I take something from you. You cut me, I cut you. You shoot me, I shoot you. You kill my mother, I kill your mother.
Q. And the individuals don’t matter?
A. What individuals? If you killed my mother, that mattered to me. That’s why I killed yours. How could the individuals not matter? You mean the white individuals, do they matter? Not if the black ones don’t. Absolutely not. Why would they? If my child dies, your child dies. If my house burns down, your house burns down. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That’s what they believe. And I see why.

I don’t remember a Rush Limbaugh radio show where he discussed a week for killing black people. So Richard Wolffe should apologize — and do more reading before he makes half-witted analogies.