Obligatory Rush Limbaugh / Rams post.
Oct 15th 2009Bull MooseSports
A fair number of conservative commentators are crying foul over Rush Limbaugh being expelled from a group trying to buy the Rams, but I don’t think there is anything terribly political about it. The NFL is extremely conservatively run (in the non-political sense of the word) and the owner’s box is not where they want attention, especially when it is someone as polarizing as Rush Limbaugh sitting in it. They don’t want the NFL version of Mark Cuban, and who can blame them? Jerry Jones and Al Davis are bad enough. (The former’s ego was unknown at the time of purchase and the latter they inherited from the AFL.)
Rush is worth about a billion dollars because he has a talent for running a wildly successful radio show, and some of that success he has obtained by stirring up controversy to market himself. He slips in and out of satire so fast that many can’t keep up (or don’t on purpose) so his remarks often end up being news. If his ego doesn’t love that -which I think it does – his ratings and wallet sure do. But there is a price to be paid, and Rush has long known that. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole thing wasn’t cooked up as a publicity stunt.
The NFL owners seem to generally like to be a small fraternity of quiet billionaires for the most part – the Illuminati of football. I’m sure the fact that Rush is out there talking to millions of people three hours a day, and saying some outlandish things that are often purposefully misinterpreted was a bigger concern to objecting NFL owners than any of his politics. And that’s their prerogative. Rush can find something else to spend some of his billion dollars on.
Rush would have been a great XFL team owner, though…
The part of this controversy I find funny, though, is the mainstream left’s problem with Limbaugh owning a team because of the way he made his money. Are they aware of how other owners made their money? Oil, timber products, oil, Enron, factory farm interests, pharmaceuticals, oil, software monopoly, cars, car dealerships, car parts stores… It just doesn’t seem like the traditional left-wing love list.
ADDED. Althouse says: “This whole NFL controversy is a gift to Rush. I don’t think Rush cared much about being one of the investors in the Rams. He wouldn’t have had any serious power running things, and the group of investors came to him about it. Now, he’s the center of attention, everyone’s talking about him, and plenty of them are embarrassing themselves with careless, stupid, and nasty racial pandering — producing audio clips which he will play on his show, accompanied by scathing mockery and insistence that the mainstream media air his side of the story. If they do not, that’s more fuel for Rush’s red-hot critique of media. If they do, then he’s on mainstream media, telling it his way at last. “
6 Comments »
cb on 15 Oct 2009 at 4:17 pm #
F Rush. I wouldn’t see many black players playing for the Rams.
“I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”
“Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
“The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.”
“Take that bone out of your nose and call me back (to an African American female caller).”
“They’re 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares? “
Paul on 15 Oct 2009 at 6:49 pm #
It seems to me that all the negative vibes this blowhard (Rush Hudson Limbaugh A.KA. Jeff Christie) has been spewing over these many years has come back to blow back on his face (A classic “Blow Back”). He always tries to give off the airs that he can have anything he wants but as we all witness those with more money and influence tossed him aside like sack of potatoes and the ultimate insult was that it was done in public (money don’t buy you everything butterball).
Now of course he blames everyone else (Michael J. Fox, Perez Hilton, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Sonia Sotomayor, Hillary Clinton, Olympia Snowe, ESPN, NFL, the media, basically people of color, women and gays) when of course all you have to do is listen to his show and plainly hear his daily prejudices filled sermons. So NFL, I salute you decision, job well done. And to the whaling cry baby perched on his self made pedestal, quit your whining it was your own fault. Don’t we all feel better?
Bull Moose on 15 Oct 2009 at 6:47 pm #
To my point. (See paragraph 2.)
Quotes #1, 3, and 4, are right out of the standard faux-outrage playbook.
And since no blacks boycotted actual racist Red McComb’s team, I don’t see many boycotting a team owned by Rush.
Bull Moose on 15 Oct 2009 at 8:15 pm #
“So NFL, I salute you decision, job well done.”
There really wasn’t a decision. And there certainly wasn’t one by “the NFL.”
“when of course all you have to do is listen to his show and plainly hear his daily prejudices filled sermons.”
I don’t listen to him often – maybe a couple hours a month – so I always miss these hate filled sermons. I wish Althouse would alert us on her blog when one of those happens.
Bull Moose on 15 Oct 2009 at 9:58 pm #
“I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”
I went looking for the context of that quote out of curiosity. Apparently, it is fake - or at the minimum can’t be sourced, which means it is as good as faked. I went looking for it, since I have never heard the context. The reason is there is no context.
Bull Moose on 15 Oct 2009 at 10:06 pm #
Geeze, 3 of the 5 of these shocking quotes are unsourced (likely meaning made up) and one of the sourced ones is back from his days as a insult, shock-jock schtick in the early ’70’s…
There’s this website called Snopes you might want to check out:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/limbaugh.asp