Truth Bombs

Over the past few weeks, radio personality, oxycontin enthusiast and blowhard extraordinaire Rush Limbaugh has flirted with the idea of professional football team ownership. In a group investment bid led by St. Louis Blues owner Dave Checketts, Limbaugh's name was included on a list of interested parties vying for the 929 million dollar franchise.

Limbaugh's involvement sparked an inferno of reactionary opining in seemingly every news publication, from ESPN to MSNBC to Vibe magazine, with critics citing some of Limbaugh's racially inflammatory sound bytes of note, particularly those concerning the NFL, as evidence that he was far from an ideal candidate. For the record, Fox News, and Bill O'Reilly in particular, thinks Rush's dismissal by his own business partners "... is real 1984 thought-police stuff."

One such Rush Limbaugh quote, the most demonstrative of his real attitudes in my reckoning, is selected from a June 2007 episode of The Rush Limbaugh Show. He remarked, "The NFL looks all too often like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it."

One of Limbaugh's most favored counter arguments is that his critics take incendiary quotes from his broadcasts out of context, so I went to a conservative blog and read the transcript of the  full episode with the quote in question, posted under the auspices of absolving the host by grounding his careless statement in the guttural bog of Limbaughian rhetoric.

What I discovered is that Rush tagged that punchline onto the tail end of a meandering tirade about the rambunctious on-field behavior of today's gridiron heroes. I was actually struck by how little Rush's rant had to do with racial politics until those closing lines, but then the insidious intent behind the diatribe crystallized in my mind.

Perhaps it's incidental that Limbaugh laments the decline of good ol' boy culture in American football as the sport grows increasingly dominated by African American athletes, but Limbaugh's catalogue of racial controversy betrays his prejudices. As I don't know Mr. Limbaugh personally, I cannot attest to whether or not he is a racist, but he does indeed provide a radio airwave haven for angry racists: three hours a day, five days a week.

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, whom, according to Limbaugh, owed his career success to affirmative action (statements that led to the termination of Limbaugh's short stint as a sports analyst), was among the chorus of voices joining to protest Limbaugh's further involvement in the NFL. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, as well as Colts owner Jim Irsay, also voiced their reluctance to approve Limbaugh's bid. The Reverend Al Sharpton lended his oddly hypnotic speechifying and slick Gheri curl to the outcry.

After days of heated speculation and cable news pontificating, Limbaugh was dropped by the Checketts group in an effort to secure their purchase. Consequently, Rush has taken to the airwaves, bloviating about his victimization by the media in "Obama's America," and how his free speech has been infringed.

What Limbaugh and his supporters fail to understand, however, is that while Limbaugh is certainly free to promulgate race-baiting vitriol at will, so too are those offended by his statements allowed to air their grievances. So too are his investor friends allowed to remove him from their proposal.

It sounds like the free market at work to me.