What Rush Limbaugh’s last word leaves out
Hey big guy, at least you can keep cheering for the Steelers now
I have to say, I feel a little bad for Rush Limbaugh. Since word leaked out that he was ponying up money with Dave Checketts to become a part owner of the National Football League’s flagging St. Louis Rams, the master of mouth diarrhea has had his reputation unfairly smeared in the past couple of weeks. Far too many media outlets parroted invented quotes falsely ascribed to him. And almost none of them are taking responsibility for it and owning up to a mistake that’s a key part of journalism 101 – verifying your facts. No one deserves to be slandered or libeled.
Especially when, as I demonstrated, Rush said enough awful things that could be directly attributed to him.
Why his critics would need to find more extreme quotes when he went on record blustering that hard-working NFL players resembled criminal gang members remains beyond me to this moment. I thought the ‘crips and bloods’ quotes were evidence enough that Rush was unfit for NFL ownership, which was why I led off with them in my listicle of October 6. Combined with his inability to let go of his feud with Donovan McNabb and his willingness to politicize things like President Obama’s visit with the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers this spring, it seemed clear to me that Rush would construct a toxic narrative around his St. Louis Rams that would detract from the glory of the game by making it a proxy for the day’s political scrum.
Sadly, feud-seeking members of the media had to go farther. It was a poor performance on their part.
Then again, this was more smoke than fire. It turns out that whatever was smoldering on cable news and among sports writers about Rush becoming a football team owner, it wasn’t really up to the media. And this is what Rush’s “last word” on the subject in today’s Wall Street Journal leaves out.
Ultimately, it wasn’t up to MSNBC, the Washington Post sports page, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, or me, if Rush was going to become an NFL team owner. It was up to the current NFL owners. Rush doesn’t address this question directly. The NFL owners collectively are not easily swayed by what gets said in the press – it just turns out that most of them don’t like Rush (maybe because he alleges that they ‘rape’ fans).
And you can’t just say that these owners, who were the real groundswell against Rush, are all toadying progressive Democrats who fear getting on the wrong side of the mainstream media. Jim Irsay, the Indianapolis Colts owner who stood up and said Rush wasn’t welcome, gave money twice to President Bush and also to the Republican National Committee. He did not back Democratic political candidates.
But I will say one thing for Rush – he came closer to honestly addressing another of the factors that resulted in the end of his partial football ownership dreams:
Having brought me into his group, Mr. Checketts now wanted a way out. He asked me to resign. I told him no way. I had done nothing wrong. I had not uttered the words these people were putting in my mouth. And I would not bow to their libels and pressure. He would have to drop me from the group. A few days later, he did.
via Rush Limbaugh: The Race Card, Football and Me – WSJ.com.
If anyone should be accused of falling victim to the ‘cancer’ that Rush sees in allegations of racism against him, it’s Checketts. Checketts brought him aboard, and asked him to back down. Rush was brave enough to say, “No, you fire me because I won’t quit.” Few on the side who are defending Rush have condemned Checketts with as much fervor as they’ve gone after Al Sharpton and CNN’s Rick Sanchez.
And that just goes to show that the Rush owning an NFL dispute is a proxy for other things going on in our political world now. But hopefully Rush’s op-ed really is the last word and we can move on to the next spate in our endless political silly season.
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I don’t think the Limbaugh issue is primarily about the media or politics at all. It’s about a person who has made sickeningly racist statements about African-Americans being allowed to take an ownership position in a league in which the vast majority of players are African-American.
Focusing on politics and media obscures this issue.
And let’s face it, Rush makes a living making inflammatory and often untrue statements. He cannot now be surprised when someone uses those same tactics against him.
Also, I forgot one question: How do you know that the quotes attributed to Limbaugh were false? Most of them came from this book by Jack Huberman: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1560258756
Has anyone asked Jack for his sources? Or does everyone just believe Toby Harnden when he says everything came from Wikipedia and Wikiquotes? He didn’t even do his homework!
I don’t think that’s a fair standard at all. It’s like math class, you have to show your work. Following Rush’s show from time to time as I have, and for this instance in particular, I feel like Rush is the kind of guy who remembers a lot of what he says on the air. If he’s willing to go out on a limb and say up front that the quotes are false, I’m willing to grant to him that it’s true.
Moreover, the Huffington Post asked Jack Huberman to substantiate the claim, and so far he has not done so.
As for what’s at issue in Rush’s ownership, I don’t disagree, but not being black, I don’t think I can speak for black players on that question.
In response to another comment. See in context »Not sure what standard you’re referring to; my point was that it’s a little presumptuous for the media to say that the quotes were erroneously attributed and not to know that for certain. Especially when someone has a history of these types of statements. And he does. Media Matter’s page on his colorblind statements (with audio and video) is really enlightening.
What I don’t get is that the media is acting as if these unverified statements are the sole reason Limbaugh is no longer part of the ownership group. The likely reality is that he was preventing that group from getting the team which is why they dropped him! If they could have kept him and won, my guess is they would have.
I do agree with you that the book author who raised these quotes should be able to substantiate his quotes. But is it that he doesn’t have the information readily available, or that he doesn’t have the information at all? I’d like to give it a week or so and see what happens. The notes and interviews from my 2007 book are in storage and if someone asked me to substantiate a quote, I’d need time to get to my stuff. If he can’t produce it, then that’s a different story. But I still don’t think it would have changed the outcome.
In response to another comment. See in context »It seems really simple to me: Rush Limbaugh has made enough incendiary statements that you don’t need to cite other quotes that he didn’t say. If you can’t source a quote, and verify that it was actually said at a particular date/location, you don’t run with it.
Going by the standard you’re setting – we can run unverified quotes because we don’t like other things people have said – is what lets Fox and Friends go on the air in January 2008 and declare that Barack Obama was educated in a ‘Muslim madarassah.’ I abhorred it then, and I abhor it now. I found more than 10 crazy things Rush said about the NFL, and I can source every single one of them to a show that he said it on. I don’t understand why any other news outlet gets to run by a faster and looser standard, especially given the talking point it hands to Rush’s defenders.
And I really think Rush didn’t make those statements. He wouldn’t have gone on record saying so if he wasn’t certain because of the damage it will do to him if he’s proven wrong.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] couple of weeks ago, I talked about how I felt bad for Rush Limbaugh being accused of saying horribly racist things he actually didn’t say (in [...]