Phil Sheridan | Penalize Rush for illegal use of the mouth
By Phil Sheridan
Inquirer Columnist
The sick thing is, this is exactly what ESPN had in mind when the all-sports network hired veteran provocateur Rush Limbaugh for its Sunday NFL pregame show. You can imagine the meeting. The ESPN bigwigs must have needed drool cups to handle the runoff when they discussed the controversy Limbaugh would generate.
Well, here it is. Just be advised, ESPN, that you're not fooling anyone. You brought this tired act out of his radio closet, where he rants to people who already agree with him, to stir things up. Prepare to get spattered.
The smart thing would be to ignore it. Thing is, nobody ever called sportswriters smart. So there you have it.
Limbaugh's idea of commentary Sunday involved an absurd attack on Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb and on "the media" that have overrated him because "the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There's interest in black quarterbacks and coaches doing well." McNabb, Limbaugh said, isn't "as good as everyone says he has been."
Here's your mistake, Rush. You stepped out of your radio comfort zone, where "Dittoheads" either echo your twisted view of America or you can cut them off. You stepped into a place where your bluff - and that's all it ever has been - is easily called.
The only thing tough about this is deciding where to begin. How about with "the media"?
Conservative sleight-of-hand artists like Limbaugh love to use the label "the media" (alternately "the liberal media") as a kind of blanket insult. Well, guess what, Rush? You've got a nationally syndicated radio show. You have your own Web site. You had a national TV show. Now you're on ESPN every Sunday morning.
You.
Are.
The.
Media.
Was that slow enough for you to grasp? You are the media. You're a part of them, anyway. Just like this paper and the others that have covered McNabb since he came to the Eagles in 1999. Just like the radio stations that thrive on Eagles coverage and just like ESPN, which has set the bar for overpromoting athletes so high that no other outlet will ever come close to hitting it.
Second, let's take on the idea that the phantom "media" have hyped McNabb because of some agenda. A little history might be in order.
In 1985, Randall Cunningham was drafted by the Eagles. At his first news conference in Philadelphia, an older white reporter asked him, "What makes you think you'll ever be able to read NFL defenses?"
In January 1988, it was considered major news that an African American quarterback named Doug Williams was starting in the Super Bowl for the Washington Redskins. During the pregame week of hype, Williams was famously asked, "How long have you been a black quarterback?"
To his credit, he calmly replied that he'd always been a quarterback and he'd also always been black. Then Doug Williams went out and earned the most valuable player award in that Super Bowl.
The point is, this ground was covered a long time ago by those of us who cover sports for a living. Nobody is perfect, of course, but McNabb's tenure here has been marked by coverage that focuses on his performance, his progress and his work ethic. That includes positive coverage as well as negative.
From the most matter-of-fact wire service report to the most outspoken talk-radio shouter, McNabb's race has not been an issue.
Until now. Until Rush Limbaugh and his mouth made it an issue. But why is anyone surprised? This is the same man who once told an African American caller to "take that bone out of your nose and call me back." The same man who once said, "Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?"
With that record - kept by a group called Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, or FAIR - ESPN gave this guy a job commenting on a league in which the majority of the players are black. ESPN, which is essentially a corporate partner of the NFL, gave this job to Limbaugh even as the league struggles with its own notorious paucity of minority coaches and general managers.
Finally, there is the substance of Limbaugh's statement, that McNabb isn't as good as the media say and that he's gotten credit that should go to the Eagles' defense. Anyone who has watched this team for the last three years would know that is laughable. The defense has been very good and has gotten due credit. But McNabb has been good much of the time, very good some of the time and great on occasion. Talk to his teammates and to his opponents and you hear the kind of respect that someone like Limbaugh would know nothing about.
It is telling that Limbaugh pounced on a two-game slump by McNabb to advance his own pathetic agenda. It's a shame that Steve Young - who didn't become an effective NFL starter until he was plugged into the great San Francisco 49ers' offense in his eighth pro season - lent credence to Limbaugh's doggerel by suggesting that Koy Detmer would run the Eagles' offense better.
Fortunately for McNabb, his record speaks for itself.
But then, so does Limbaugh's. Unfortunately for ESPN, as long as he's on the air, Limbaugh's record speaks for the network, too.
Freepers everywhere will be calling the Philly Daily News "PC", as if it was an actuall argument.
"Right now we can tell you a report was filed by the family of a 12 year old boy yesterday afternoon alleging Mr. Michael Jackson of criminal activity. A search warrant has been filed and that search is currently taking place. Mr. Jackson has not been charged with any crime. We cannot specifically address the content of the police report as it is confidential information at the present time, however, we can confirm that Mr. Jackson forced the boy to listen to the Howard Stern show and watch the movie Private Parts over and over again."
The Duchess of Zeon wrote:...Is this a joke? Did ESPN really hire Rush Limbaugh!?
Yeah, they did. Notice the fat fuck doesn't have anything to say about Steve McNair, Dante Culpepper, Aaron Brooks, or even Quincy Carter.
Mind you, anyone who was running his mouth about Donovan being overrated rightly looks like a damn fool now, but Rush's comments were particularly pointless and vile.
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
Darth Wong wrote:The popularity of Rush Limbaugh is a convenient standing rebuttal to anyone who says that the American public education system is working.
That has to be sig material for any American
Via money Europe could become political in five years" "... the current communities should be completed by a Finance Common Market which would lead us to European economic unity. Only then would ... the mutual commitments make it fairly easy to produce the political union which is the goal"
RedImperator wrote:
Yeah, they did. Notice the fat fuck doesn't have anything to say about Steve McNair, Dante Culpepper, Aaron Brooks, or even Quincy Carter.
Mind you, anyone who was running his mouth about Donovan being overrated rightly looks like a damn fool now, but Rush's comments were particularly pointless and vile.
Maybe we should all just convert to Islam and be done with it.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
RedImperator wrote:
Yeah, they did. Notice the fat fuck doesn't have anything to say about Steve McNair, Dante Culpepper, Aaron Brooks, or even Quincy Carter.
Mind you, anyone who was running his mouth about Donovan being overrated rightly looks like a damn fool now, but Rush's comments were particularly pointless and vile.
Maybe we should all just convert to Islam and be done with it.
What, and then on top of stupid color commentary, there's no beer and the cheerleaders are dressed in pup tents? Yeah, that'll improve football.
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
RedImperator wrote:
What, and then on top of stupid color commentary, there's no beer and the cheerleaders are dressed in pup tents? Yeah, that'll improve football.
It was more of a comment on the level of depraved crassness to which society has dipped when Rush Limbaugh is hired to talk about football.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
The Duchess of Zeon wrote:
Maybe we should all just convert to Islam and be done with it.
What, and then on top of stupid color commentary, there's no beer and the cheerleaders are dressed in pup tents? Yeah, that'll improve football.
Nah, Islam just dumps the racism and replaces it with beating the crap out of any non-Muslim in the crowd. Doesn't really help much...
No, and in fact is would just distract the fans in the cheap seats from delivering visiting team fans their own well deserved beatings.
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
Yeah, they did. Notice the fat fuck doesn't have anything to say about Steve McNair, Dante Culpepper, Aaron Brooks, or even Quincy Carter.
Nooo.....
*has flashbacks to the Carter's 7-turnover game against SC*
BoTM / JL / MM / HAB / VRWC / Horseman
I'm studying for the CPA exam. Have a nice summer, and if you're down just sit back and realize that Joe is off somewhere, doing much worse than you are.
RedImperator wrote:
Mind you, anyone who was running his mouth about Donovan being overrated rightly looks like a damn fool now, but Rush's comments were particularly pointless and vile.
There was a fair amount in "the media" questioning how good a quarterback McNab was after the Eagles' Monday Night loss a few weeks ago. No one said he wasn't a great athlete but they were questioning his roll as quarterback.
Personally, I think he had a really bad night a few weeks ago and that's it. Sure he could be better in some things but right now he's better than the QBs on at least ¾ of the teams in the NFL. Unfortunatly he's probably reached that point where he's going to take and hear shit until he wins a Super Bowl.
By the pricking of my thumb,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks.
What caused them to consider having a political radio talk show host discuss football? Did they think he'd blame a team's bad performance on the Democrats?
Tsyroc wrote:There was a fair amount in "the media" questioning how good a quarterback McNab was after the Eagles' Monday Night loss a few weeks ago. No one said he wasn't a great athlete but they were questioning his roll as quarterback.
Unlike Rush Limbaugh, however, I suspect that few, if any of them tried to bring McNabb's race into it. Limbaugh is an idiot.
Personally, I think he had a really bad night a few weeks ago and that's it. Sure he could be better in some things but right now he's better than the QBs on at least ¾ of the teams in the NFL. Unfortunatly he's probably reached that point where he's going to take and hear shit until he wins a Super Bowl.
Yes, but on the basis of performance vs expectations, not on Limbaugh's idiotic claim that he's only got a starting job in the NFL because he's black.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
The Duchess of Zeon wrote:...Is this a joke? Did ESPN really hire Rush Limbaugh!?
Yeah, they did. Notice the fat fuck doesn't have anything to say about Steve McNair, Dante Culpepper, Aaron Brooks, or even Quincy Carter.
Mind you, anyone who was running his mouth about Donovan being overrated rightly looks like a damn fool now, but Rush's comments were particularly pointless and vile.
Worst of all, he forgets Michael Vick, just about the most talented QB on the horizon now. I thought he at least knew something about football.
BoTM / JL / MM / HAB / VRWC / Horseman
I'm studying for the CPA exam. Have a nice summer, and if you're down just sit back and realize that Joe is off somewhere, doing much worse than you are.
As a young broadcaster in the 1970s, Limbaugh once told a black caller: "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back." A decade ago, after becoming nationally syndicated, he mused on the air: "Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?"
In 1992, on his now-defunct TV show, Limbaugh expressed his ire when Spike Lee urged that black schoolchildren get off from school to see his film Malcolm X: "Spike, if you're going to do that, let's complete the education experience. You should tell them that they should loot the theater, and then blow it up on their way out."
In a similar vein, here is Limbaugh's mocking take on the NAACP, a group with a ninety-year commitment to nonviolence: "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."
When Carol Moseley-Braun (D-IL) was in the U.S. Senate, the first black woman ever elected to that body, Limbaugh would play the "Movin' On Up" theme song from TV's "Jeffersons" when he mentioned her. Limbaugh sometimes still uses mock dialect -- substituting "ax" for "ask"-- when discussing black leaders.
Such quotes and antics -- many compiled by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) for our 1995 book -- offer a whiff of Limbaugh's racial sensibility. So does his claim that racism in America "is fueled primarily by the rantings and ravings" of people like Jesse Jackson. Or his ugly reference two years ago to the father of Madonna's first child, a Latino, as "a gang-member type guy" -- an individual with no gang background.
In 1994, Limbaugh mocked St. Louis for building a rail line to East St. Louis "where nobody goes." East St. Louis is home to roughly 40,000 residents -- 98 percent of whom are African-Americans. One of its 40,000 "nobodies" is star NFL linebacker Bryan Cox.
Once, in response to a caller arguing that black people need to be heard, Limbaugh responded: "They are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?" That's not an unusual response for a talk radio host playing to an audience of "angry white males." It may not play so well among National Football League players, 70 percent of whom are African American.
"Right now we can tell you a report was filed by the family of a 12 year old boy yesterday afternoon alleging Mr. Michael Jackson of criminal activity. A search warrant has been filed and that search is currently taking place. Mr. Jackson has not been charged with any crime. We cannot specifically address the content of the police report as it is confidential information at the present time, however, we can confirm that Mr. Jackson forced the boy to listen to the Howard Stern show and watch the movie Private Parts over and over again."
Damn, I didn't even know that Limbaugh was still around. I thought he'd been shuffled off to the dustbin of history.
Something about Libertarianism always bothered me. Then one day, I realized what it was:
Libertarian philosophy can be boiled down to the phrase, "Work Will Make You Free."
In Libertarianism, there is no Government, so the Bosses are free to exploit the Workers.
In Communism, there is no Government, so the Workers are free to exploit the Bosses.
So in Libertarianism, man exploits man, but in Communism, its the other way around! If all you want to do is have some harmless, mindless fun, go H3RE INST3ADZ0RZ!! Grrr! Fight my Brute, you pansy!
Coyote wrote:Damn, I didn't even know that Limbaugh was still around. I thought he'd been shuffled off to the dustbin of history.
He's not as big these days, he's little more than a mouthpiece for the Bush administration.
BoTM / JL / MM / HAB / VRWC / Horseman
I'm studying for the CPA exam. Have a nice summer, and if you're down just sit back and realize that Joe is off somewhere, doing much worse than you are.
Frank Hipper wrote:I take it no one got my Howard Cosell comment?
I remember that Cosell got in shit for some kind of racial comment, but I don't recall what it was.
He said, while on air, "Look at that monkey run!".
I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find out who it was he was talking about, and during what game. But that line I will never forget...
Howard Cosell. The broadcaster everybody loved to hate.
I seem to recall sports bars having lines of people waiting to throw things at the TV when Cosell appeared. Gerald frickin' Ford called ABC and asked them to take Cosell off the air!
Limbaugh ain't nothing until he pisses off a sitting President so much that the Prez asks the network to unplug him.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
