Color Commentator

 

Rush Limbaugh may have done more damage to this country than all but a few individuals in our history. Reaching a radio audience in the millions, complaining about the incessant failure of government and particularly the wussy Democrats, he has fomented among stupid rightwingers -- mostly male -- a level of anger and corrosion that has taken its toll in our society over the past decade.

His listeners were a significant factor in a number of states that gave the election to Bush in 2000. And if it weren’t for Limbaugh, there wouldn’t have been enough public support for the IraqAttaq. He’s been successfully propagandizing a narrow, conservative agenda for years, which he has flavored with a meanspiritedness that went beyond making his point.

I happened to listen to him for a few minutes back when Isabel was stirring in the Carribean. He said he’d been driving by the Atlantic Ocean in his home state of Florida, and commented on how the stormy seas showed him how enormously powerful was mother nature. So powerful, he then non sequituriously continued, that anyone who thinks that global warming exists must be an idiot. And people buy into that.

Anyway, Limbaugh decided to indulge his sportif side with some sportscasting for ESPN. It was during a broadcast last month that he said he thought the Philadelphia quarterback had been getting more favorable press than he deserved because the media wanted to support a black quarterback. The comment seemed unremarkable at the time, but several days later, suddenly there was a storm of charges that Limbaugh was a racist.

As I said, I have no compassion for the man, but I didn’t hear in his remarks that he is a racist. I heard him attacking the media for giving a player a free ride. I don’t know about the player or the media coverage. Many people rallied behind the quarterback, declaring he was getting the good treatment he deserved. Meanwhile, the press poo-poo’d the notion that they would ever speak with a gloved tongue. Yeah, right.

Anyway, the hysterical outrage against him forced Limbaugh to resign, and ESPN opted not to plead with him to stay.

Way back when, sportscasting legend Howard Cosell, referring to a football player scrambling down the field toward the goal line, said something like "Look at that monkey run!" Because the player was black, the inference was that Cosell was somehow being a racist. I didn’t know that white players can’t scramble like monkeys. Maybe if they’re on oxycontin, but that’s another story.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.

 

Home

©2003 SetonnoteS

.