Did the NFL and the bid team Rush Limbaugh was a part of simply make a smart business decision by denying Limbaugh, a man whose positions vacillate between bigotry and willful ignorance, ownership of one of their franchises?
Yes.
So why not Rush? Admittedly, much of the discussion surrounding Rush centers on comments that are more on the periphery of his politics. Perhaps, then, news coverage of Limbaugh should focus on his policy discussions.
But therein lies the problem: The Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of this world make their millions on account of their charming extremism.
So when it comes to a man that draws around 20 million listeners a day and influences the tone of a large portion of this country’s mood, an acute awareness of his most soundbite-worthy moments is not only relevant, it is crucial.
In short, it is the very person that Rush Limbaugh is (or, to be fair, the self-caricatured figure of his media work) that cost him his NFL ownership dreams.
Limbaugh is the most bloviating blowhard of the free enterprise movement. He believes in business, he believes in privatization and he believes in the American freedom to self-determination.
Take, for example, his commentary of a 2002 scandal involving Martha Burk and the Augusta National Golf Club. When the nation’s premier golf course refused to admit any females onto its grounds, Limbaugh heaped praise on club Chairman Hootie Johnson and his decision to deny Burk the decency of a meeting: “Most clubs would have cowed in fear and called a meeting to reach a “˜common goal’ and all that. Not Augusta National.”
In this, Rush Limbaugh’s America, we can keep our women and men on separate golf courses. We elect to establish our own divisions because we can. Because we believe in capitalism and free enterprise, our businesses can make their own decisions.
Except, of course, when these decisions don’t benefit Rush.
When this Rams controversy started brewing, Limbaugh “immediately started screaming about the race hustlers” that apparently ended his hopes. But of course, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are not to blame for the growing distaste with Limbaugh’s tactics. He is.
Limbaugh has a rapsheet of comments that elicit a career of race-baiting and controversy-seeking. It is precisely his most race-focused comments that doomed his bid, not his political positions.
Just last week, Limbaugh himself took to his radio show to “explain” his infamous “Bloods and Crips” comment. When Limbaugh was doing sports commentary for ESPN, he compared the demeanor of NFL players to that of gang members. In his own words: “I said, “˜Sometimes the game looks like the Bloods and the Crips without weapons.”
The big man also said that quarterback Donovan McNabb was appreciated not so much for his talent as for his skin color. Because, obviously, the NFL practices affirmative action in selecting its quarterbacks.
These comments and countless others make clear that Limbaugh completely lacks the professionalism and tact required of even a minor owner of an organization as large as an NFL franchise.
Limbaugh is a man of the spectacle. In his letter to the Wall Street Journal, he claimed, “this spectacle is bigger than I am.” He goes on to say that there is a “blind hatred” of all things conservative, and that the weapon of choice for this group of liberal haters is (what else?) the race card.
“Racism is too often their sledgehammer,” he writes, “And it is being used to try to keep citizens who don’t share the left’s agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us.”
One wonders why playing 18 holes at the nation’s premier golf course is not a part of the “full array of opportunities” America offers.
Additionally, at what point will calling people out on using the race card when they are not using it become a large enough problem that it warrants its own term? The conservative right in this country has pounced on this notion of a meta-race-card so often that it is already hackneyed and exhausted.
At the end of the day, Limbaugh and the NFL are not so different. After all, many of what appear to be America’s most die-hard football fans are not found in its liberal parts but in the depths of middle America.
Of course there are the snobby New England football fans, but most of them are fair-weather anyway, right? Think of Green Bay, Wis. and of Cleveland, Ohio. Football is the pastime of what Sarah Palin would probably call “real America.”
As Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal Constitution blogged, “There’s the rub, because the NFL is in business to make itself loved by large numbers of Americans. A business that needs to be loved is a poor partner for a man who needs to be hated.”
But though some of these genuine Americans might listen to Limbaugh’s show, they do not share his fundamental flaw. True Americans, after all, do not hate. Rush Limbaugh is in the business of the spectacle. He is in the business of being hated.
E-mail Makarechi at kmakarechi@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.