Update: Local Public Works Official Cheers Vandalism

Somebody in Baltimore isn't a fan of Rush Limbaugh.
Open thread:

UPDATE:

In a town so tough that most murders get just a few paragraphs in the paper, somebody called The Sun about 8 a.m. yesterday with a tip about a vandalized billboard.

By noon, according to The Sun, the story was all over the Internet, Rush Limbaugh was kicking off his national radio show with it, and Baltimore's City Hall was fielding calls from as far away as California. By 5 p.m., the story had become one of the three most popular individual articles in the history of the paper's Web site, with nearly 200,000 page views.

There's a reason the story had legs. The paint-splattered billboard featured Limbaugh's mug. And the tipster was a spokesman for a city agency - the one responsible for cleaning up graffiti -- who let it be known that he was no "dittohead."

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[Robert Murrow of Baltimore's Department of Public Works], a soft-spoken man who is usually in the limelight only when a water main breaks, called the paper after spotting the defaced Limbaugh sign on the Jones Falls Expressway near the Guilford Avenue exit. He gave the reporter his quip and hung up.

The big question remains unanswered, however. Why did Murrow call a newspaper and dump on Limbaugh instead of simply reporting the vandalism to either the sign owner or WCBM, the radio station who bought advertising on the defaced sign?

ORIGINAL POST:

"It looks like they took globs of paint and threw it on his face. It looks great. It did my heart good."

Those were the words of Robert Murrow, a spokesman for the Baltimore's Department of Public Works, admittedly not a Limbaugh fan, after he saw vandalism as he drove to work this morning on I-83 near the Guilford Avenue exit. He called The Baltimore Sun, saying that someone had poured paint over the image of Limbaugh's face on a large billboard advertising local air times for the conservative radio talk-show host.

The Baltimore Sun reports Kurt L. Kocher, chief spokesman for the city's Department of Public Works and Murrow's supervisor, took issue with Murrow's statement.

"As much as you don't like Rush Limbaugh, you don't endorse vandalism, period," Kocher said. "It's an outrageous comment, and he shouldn't have said it. It is not our policy. I think he got overenthusiastic about his feelings for Mr. Limbaugh. I am very upset about that comment, and I've let him know I'm very upset about that comment. It's his personal comment and it's wrong."

The billboard is privately owned; Murrow said the city is not responsible for cleaning it.

On his radio program today, Limbaugh, who is nationally syndicated on Baltimore's WCBM 680 AM, laughed at the vandalism and said the staion should leave the sign alone. "Listen to hear what the left doesn't want you to know." should be added as the radio program's slogan on the damaged sign, he remarked.

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