The whole Rush Limbaugh controversy

[Jazz Kid]

Personally, I think this is all quite silly. I do listen to Rush sometimes, but I listen not because I agree with everything he says, but because he is a good radio host. In my opinion, everyone is overreacting to his little comment. People get so offended nowadays. I don't understand how people can get so mad over one little comment in this country that features legal hate groups such as the KKK, black panthers etc. We have much bigger issues to worry about in the area of race than some minute comment one person made.

[gdogus]

Agreed, but understand that Limbaugh's firing is a company decision; it's not a big thing until the news media decide that it is, and blow it all up into the STORY OF THE WEEK. I probably would have fired him too, but I wouldn't make a big deal about it. The media do this, and then everyone has to put in their two cents, and soon it's an inescapable story.

Now, think about all of the much more important stories that Limbaugh's firing crowds out of our consciousness. What's that? You can't think of any? Maybe that's because they aren't reported, in favor of stuff like this.

It's mind contol on a very high level, and it's pretty sad.

[Tenorman]

I am going to stick my nose into US politics here, and no doubt I will get it cut off big time. Nothing was reported here in the UK. What the hell did the guy do?

Most Brits, I think, were totally stunned when the Dixie Chicks (or whoever - that country group, who said that they were ashamed to come frm the same state as Bush) were barred from various radio stations. What the hell was that all about.

Over here, if someone wants to say that they hate Tony Blair or the Queen - they can do so - they won't get barred from air-play. Did someone say freedom of speech???

[WestCoast Ghost]

I thought you meant the pill-popping. :eek2: :smokin:

[bombastic]

Didn't Al Franken have a book a while back entitled "Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot."?:laugh:

[Edward]

Well, Rush Limbaugh IS a big, fat idiot, so what did ESPN expect when they hired him as an analyst? (BTW, I highly recommend all of Al Franken's books for both their political and comic content.)

Tenorman,

Rush Limbaugh is a hardcore Republican entertainer whom some poor, delusional souls consider a bona fide journalist. In the hopes of boosting ratings, ESPN (a cable sports channel) hired Limbaugh this NFL season as a regular commentator for its "NFL Sunday Countdown" show. Prior to last weekend's Buffalo Bills - Philadelphia Eagles game, Limbaugh made some rather stupid and inflammatory comments regarding the Eagles' black quarterback, Donovan McNabb. I quote:

I don't think he's been that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team.

Donovan McNabb has been to three straight Pro-Bowls and two consecutive NFC Championship games. He was also runner-up for MVP during his first full season as starter. Almost a third of the NFL's thirty-two teams start black quarterbacks, and two of the other top quarterbacks in the league, Michael Vick and Daunte Culpepper, are also black. (Vick and Culpepper are both presently sidelined with injuries.)

Limbaugh's comments were absolutely stupid. The media has had nothing to do with the real success that black quarterbacks have enjoyed in the NFL or in the college game. (Doesn't the great NFL fan Limbaugh remember a few years back when Warren Moon and Randall Cunningham were among the best quarterbacks in the NFL, or do they not count because they failed to win Superbowls?) If the man had an I.Q. somewhere above room temperature, he would have realized that he could criticize Donovan McNabb as being over-rated without bringing up race.

[bombastic]

Stupid White Men are all over the place. This kind of thing happens all the time. Trent Lott. Then again-Stupidity comes in all colors. Mike Tyson.

[clifton]

The real problem is that Limbaugh clearly implied that he thinks black people are too stupid to be quarterbacks or coaches. That's racism, slightly disguised, but only slightly. It's the same racist myth black quarterbacks have been fighting for decades. Here in Philly, where McNabb is very popular, Limbaugh's indictment set off a firestorm. Rush has a history of on-air racism, and I don't think people beyond his fan base realized how venomous he really is. Now everyone knows.

[jav]

Apparently fellow analyst Tom Jackson brought about the firing when he basically gave an ultimatum- him or me. He said he was moved to do so when a black child questioned whether or not it was still okay for him to be a quarterback. Limbaugh is a racist and yet another example of how un-liberal the media is in this country. If you check the news shows and talk shows, in particular reactionary Fox News the myth of the liberal media is exposed for the lie that it is. jav

[bombastic]

That Joe Scarborough guy is another right wing unquestioning bush loyalist. I watch him because it's somewhat amusing. Anyone else watch this guy?

[KolumBUZZ]

The real problem is that Limbaugh clearly implied that he thinks black people are too stupid to be quarterbacks or coaches

Whoa, that's quite a leap of faith you're taking there man.

Look I'm the last person to want to defend Rush Limbaugh but I think his statement was construed as racist only in light of his previous reputation and remarks. He said, plainly, that he thinks the media and the NFL have an agenda to pump up black quarterbacks beyond their actual merit. Where this remark is racist in and of itself is beyond me. It's what people read into it, e.g. "Oh, Rush, being the racist guy, must think black quarterbacks still don't have the brains to succeed at quarterback."

Let's be clear about this: he didn't say McNabb wasn't a GOOD quarterback or even that he wasn't one of the top 5 quarterbacks anyway= he said he felt he was overrated and that the Eagles defense has been far more important to their success.

This is the whole problem with that "overrated" terminology though in any event. It's an inherently subjective term, and because people naturally fear the worst with a negative cat like Limbaugh, when he says "overrated" people hear it as "no value at all."

What's stupid about all of this though is that in the end, I suspect his real beef about the NFL's "social concern" is not with promoting black QBs like McNabb but the new policy that mandates team front offices interview minority candidates. There you have a real debate. With Rush opining about who's "overrated" and who's not, that's pretty much take-it or leave-it.

[clifton]

Kolumbuzz: Rush has previously opined that blacks are lazy and don't want to work. He has said of blacks, "They're 11% of the population. Who cares?" And there's a lot more. My analysis of what he said on ESPN isn't a leap of faith at all. It's a logical inference. And it's important because Limbaugh is well known, has a large audience, and is representative of right wing talk radio in general. Yes he's a racist, and now everybody knows it.

[KolumBUZZ]

reading someone's past into a present statement has nothing to do with logic. logic takes statements on their own terms. intuition and suspicion tells you you're not content with logic alone.

[Mailman]

Rush has lost a lot of weight in recent years. So he's not longer a big "fat" idiot.

[clifton]

It's a logical inference to draw if you consider the context of the statement. The racial stereotype that blacks don't make good quarterbacks is still strong, only in the past five years has it begun to crumble. A black quarterback was still a rarity until the 1999 college draft. Rush Limbaugh said, "The media is desirous that a black quarterback do well". Not just McNabb. A black quarterback. Rush has a documented history of on-air racist comments. I just don't think there's any leap of faith involved in concluding that Limbaugh deliberately resurrected the racist canard that blacks are too stupid to play quarterback. If you disagree with me, that's fine, but there is real contextual evidence that Rush made a racist comment and he did so intentionally. Unless he was flying on Oxycontin and couldn't help himself.

[Jazz Kid]

Originally posted by clifton
It's a logical inference to draw if you consider the context of the statement. The racial stereotype that blacks don't make good quarterbacks is still strong, only in the past five years has it begun to crumble. A black quarterback was still a rarity until the 1999 college draft. Rush Limbaugh said, "The media is desirous that a black quarterback do well". Not just McNabb. A black quarterback. Rush has a documented history of on-air racist comments. I just don't think there's any leap of faith involved in concluding that Limbaugh deliberately resurrected the racist canard that blacks are too stupid to play quarterback. If you disagree with me, that's fine, but there is real contextual evidence that Rush made a racist comment and he did so intentionally. Unless he was flying on Oxycontin and couldn't help himself.

please find some of this well-documented on air racism and post it here...i am curious

[bombastic]

Okay-So now he's a big,skinny idiot!!! :laugh:

[marvin g]

His head is stiill FAT!!

p.s The Black Panthers were not a hate group the Black Legion was!

[KolumBUZZ]

Clif, I know Limbaugh is, generally speaking, a racist, but that doesn't mean you can "logically" infer that because he makes a questionable remark about a black quarterback that the remark was grounded in racist sentiment.

Being content that this is "reasonable enough" of an assumption and calling it "logical" are two completely different things. Logic, simply put, should always hold up on the merit of its own propositions.

Consider then:

A Rush Limbaugh has said racist things in the past.
B Rush Limbaugh made a questionable remark that could have been grounded in racist sentiment.
C Therefore, given A, it must be the case that B is true (that it was a racist statement.)

This doesn't hold up, simply because the possibility that the statement is not racist is in no way (LOGICALLY) negated by the fact of his racist history. We're not talking about the behavior of a lab rat here Clif. We're talking about a human being, and the reality is, no one knows exactly what was going through Rush Limbaugh's mind when he said this but himself.

I am not trying to be contrary or anal-retentive about this, I simply hate when I see the word "logic" or "logical" abused. Something is point-of-fact, not logical unless it holds up in terms of a rational syllogism that leaves everything accounted for.

[clifton]

KBuzz: by the proper definition of logic you're right. I took a course in logic in college but I'm gettin' old and all I can remember is that logic is actually very precise. Nonetheless, I stand by everything else I wrote. JazzKid: take a look at www.takebackthemedia.com. I warn you it's a liberal web site but they've got the goods on Rush. BTW it's late as I post this but I'll get the precise racist language and post it for all to see ASAP.

[RDK]

What I find very troubling in an overly-PC kind of way is the fact that one - whether on this board or in the world at large - can't make a comment about race or discuss the race issue with any objectivity without being labeled a racist by someone.

In other words, I'm with 'Buzz on this one. I don't care for Limbaugh one bit, but I hardly find his latest comments indicitive of any overt racism on his part.

[catesta]

Originally posted by RDK
but I hardly find his latest comments indicitive of any overt racism on his part.

Agree.

What Limbaugh said may have been stupid, but I don't believe it was intended to be a racist statement.

Not one of the other dickheads on the show challenged the comments at the time. :rolleyes:

[catesta]

Racial censorship
Thomas Sowell (archive)


October 3, 2003


It is one of the sad signs of our times that a furor was created because Rush Limbaugh expressed an opinion as to why a particular quarterback seemed to him to be over-rated. In his view, it was because the powers that be in professional football were anxious to have a star quarterback who was black.

If this was a criticism of anybody, it was a criticism of the powers that be in the National Football League. Nevertheless, people have gone ballistic, just as if he had criticized blacks as a race. But you have to twist the truth like a pretzel to reach that conclusion.

Rush's resignation from ESPN may stop the dogs from barking at his heels and all this may soon be forgotten -- but it shouldn't be. Hyper-censorship about anything in any way involving race is a danger to this whole society, on matters far more weighty than football.

When the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan first warned of the social dangers in the decline of black families back in the 1960s, and called for government policies to help deal with these dangers, he was attacked viciously for saying something that everyone now recognizes as true because the problem has grown even worse than it was when he issued his warning.

The denunciation and demonization of Pat Moynihan marked a major turning point in public discussions of racial issues. From then on, the test of what you said was no longer whether it was true but whether it was politically correct. This silenced the faint hearted -- which is to say, most of academia and virtually all of the media.

Today, if you want to read an honest assessment of the black colleges, you have to go back to a 1967 article by Christopher Jencks and the late David Riesman in the Harvard Educational Review. If you want to read an honest assessment of the black middle class you have to go back to a 1962 book, "Black Bourgeoisie" by E. Franklin Frazier, one of the leading black scholars of the 20th century.

So enshrined has racial censorship become that it can literally become a federal case if you want to give IQ tests to black children. Professor Nathan Glazer of Harvard has suggested that research on race and IQ should stop.

A long time ago, it was said that the truth will set you free. But today the idea seems to be that only the right spin will set you free. And the right spin of course means the left spin.

Facts can be ignored but their consequences cannot be escaped. If the facts don't matter, this means that the people who are going to have to pay those consequences don't matter.

None of those who demonized Daniel Patrick Moynihan has paid any price. But the black community has paid a terrible price because the problem he tried to point out was swept under the rug. Broken homes and children raising children have produced poisonous consequences, from educational failures to drugs and murder.

A highly developed and highly rewarded racial grievance industry benefits from its ability to intimidate, silence and extort. But there is always a price to be paid. That price is paid by American society as a whole, but especially by minority communities that the grievance hustlers claim to be helping.

In the current tempest in a teapot over what Rush Limbaugh said about the National Football League, neither ESPN nor Rush himself will pay any serious price. He doesn't need the job and apparently feels he doesn't need the hassle.

The question of the validity of what was said has already been lost in the shuffle. In a sense, that doesn't matter. What matters enormously is whether or not people lose the freedom to say what they think. That loss is a loss to all of us, those who agree and those who disagree.

Even wrong ideas have a contribution to make, when they provoke open discussions and investigations that end up with our knowing and understanding more than we knew or understood before. People's lives are being saved today by medicines based on a knowledge of chemistry that developed out of alchemy, a centuries-old crazy idea of turning lead into gold.

What contribution has the enforced silence of censorship ever made?

[Noj]

I find Limbaugh's statement racist in that he assumes McNabb is overrated (which Donovan isn't). Then Rush implies that the media has a racial bias which overrates McNabb (which the media doesn't). This sort of statement appeals to racists who love to claim they are "victims of reverse racism." So while what he said might not have been immediately recognizable as racism, it both calls the media racist and begs the ear of racist listeners.

Professional atheletes are exceptional individuals who are never paid for their color, but for what they can do on the field of play. Rush may as well have been saying the Philadelphia Eagles would be better off with a white quarterback but stick with their black quarterback due to pressure from the media.

McNabb was a great quarterback at Syracuse, and has steadily improved as a pro. Overrated my foot, the guy's a great athelete and a class act to boot.

[bombastic]

You know what the biggest problem with human beings is? Myself Included! Self-Righteousness!!! We all think we're RIGHT. We're all afraid to say we were WRONG. Limbaugh-Just admit that what you said was WRONG!

[Fran]

What is this "caught in a drug bust" about? I figured he took Dumb pills, but- Geeeez

[todda]

At face value, it wasn't a race comment. Based on Rush's past statements, however, I refuse to give him a free pass. My problem with the statement is that it made absolutely no sense whatsoever. If anything, it revealed the complete ignorance of professional football that Rush has. Apart from ratings, the guy had no business being on a sports analysis show. Donovan McNabb overrated? Has he even watched the guy play? If Rush Limbaugh wants to make an argument that the media gives some sort of free pass to black quarterbacks as subtle affirmative action agenda, he needs to go to Chicago where the media has been merciless towards Kordell Stewart. The guy's playing behind the worst offensive line and for the worst football coach and yet, it's all Kordell's fault that the Bears suck. And for a guy who claims to be a Steelers fan, he should have had a f***ing clue.

The media's too stupid to have an agenda.

[clifton]

Please keep in mind that Limbaugh didn't confine his criticisms to McNabb. He didn't say sports writers want black quarterback McNabb to do well but McNabb is overrated. His first sentence was, "The media are desirous that a black quarterback do well." Isn't it merely spin to say Rush was just opining that he thinks McNabb is overrated? When all his words are considered, in context, it's not at all difficult to conclude that Rush made a racist statement.

[RDK]

Clifton, we must be reading this in a different "context." This is what Rush said:

"I don't think he's [McNabb] been that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."

When he says "overrated" he's obviously talking about McNabb, not about black QBs in general. Seriously, I just don't see how his statement is racist. It probably wasn't the smartest thing he ever said given the hot button that is "racial censorship" these days - see the Sewell piece posted above - but it sounds to me like he's indicting the media more than he's criticizing McNabb.

Bear in mind that I dislike Limbaugh and haven't seen a football game in several years. I also do believe that racism still exists in this country. I just don't like to see the term bandied about when it's not appropriate. I suspect we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. ;)

[clifton]

RDK: agreeing to disagree is OK by me, but I'd like to voice a final thought on this subject. Keep in mind I'm a liberal, albeit not a left wing nut, and I'm 54 years old, and I remember the 1960's well. Back in the day, the terms "racist" and "fascist" were wildly overused by the far left, so much so that they lost all meaning. Anybody who wasn't on the lunatic fringe was a racist or fascist, including many liberals. Believe me, I was there. So now, when it becomes necessary to discuss racism, even fascism (e.g. some of the Patriot Act and DARPA), suspicion and skepticism arise. IMHO Rush intended to ressurrect old racist myths about black quarterbacks, but at least we had a civil disagreement and a civil discussion about it. Which is fine with me. Now stop me before I bloviate again.

[KolumBUZZ]

- everybody is hypersensitive about language that may have some racist connotation these days.

if only we were more interested in hearing someone's thoughts in full rather than microanalyzing their quotes and soundbytes. of course, the whole problem with racial dialogue in this country is that people talk AT each other but not TO each other. hence, the dependence on quotes and soundbytes to understand "the other."

[WestCoast Ghost]

Originally posted by Fran
What is this "caught in a drug bust" about? I figured he took Dumb pills, but- Geeeez

Rush is evidently into Hydrocodone and OxyContin, aka "Hillbilly Heroin." He has refused to comment, for now, on allegations that his housekeeper bought him thousands of such prescription pills in Florida. Here's a Reuters story:

drugprobe (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20031002/us_nm/media_limbaugh_dc_7)

As somebody else recently pointed out, Limbaugh's actually lucky that the McNabb controversy occurred. It's a much more nuanced topic, and it's eclipsed the drug investigation in most news reports. He's going to find it much more difficult to rationalize/defend his addiction, as he's made numerous statements over the years condemning drug abusers and calling for stiff penalties for those who circumvent the law in such matters.

[WestCoast Ghost]

And today he's admitting it:

Limbaughadmitsaddiction (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031010/ap_on_re_us/limbaugh_painkillers_11)