It was two weeks ago, and there it was for all to see, a billboard of Limbaugh's face, paint dripping down. Someone, name unknown, was making a statement.

Then, to make matters worse, the city's leading newspaper ran a story in which a city official in the department charged with cleaning up the mess made a statement of his own. He approved of the splattering.

“It looks like they took globs of paint and threw it on his face. It looks great. It did my heart good,” Robert Murrow, a spokesman for the city's Department of Public Works, told the Baltimore Sun. The sign has been put up by Baltimore’s conservative talk station WCBM to promote Limbaugh’s nationally syndicated show.

Suddenly it was national news, and that day who should pick it up but Limbaugh himself. He led his broadcast with the item. The talker was amused, quipping that maybe it was he who needed secret service protection, not the emerging presidential candidates. He told listeners, "For crying out loud, I'm the one who needs it."

The city was embarrassed, understandably, and that prompted a round of apologies. The first came from Kurt L. Kocher, chief spokesman for the Department of Public Works and Murrow's supervisor.

He tells Media Life that Murrow was joking around when he said what he said. "He didn’t intend anything by it, but you can’t say anything that comes across in favor of vandalism."

Then the mayor, Sheila Dixon, extended her regret to the talk show host.

WCBM was not moved by any of it.

“She apologized, but not to us, she would never come on our radio station,” says Bob Pettit, general manager of WCBM. “She’s not a big Rush fan, nor is the station a fan of Dixon.”

But the station figured a way to gain some advantage. It created a TV spot with the defaced billboard in the background. The message: "Discover what the liberal left doesn’t want you to hear.”