Rush Limbaugh Sacked

[corplinx]

Rush Limbaugh "resigned" his position with ESPN tonight (Wed 01).

The first things that came to mind were Michael Savage and Jimmy the Greek.

Michael Savage was someone rightly canned by MSNBC for among using hateful speech against a gay caller on the air.

Jimmy the Greek was crapcanned from CBS years ago for speaking an unpleasant truth.

In this case, I think Rush is more lke Jimmy the Greek than Michael Savage.

The media and the sports organizations always make a story out of the novelty player. Tiger Woods anyone? Tiger nowadays however is "da man" when it comes to golf and the novelty of "look, its a non-white guy" is over with. Or how about the big Chinese center in the NBA?

The truth is, the media and the sports orgs are hardly colorblind at all. They pay extra special attention to players like these as if they are fish-out-of-water stories. If you look at what Rush said, and analyze the data, I think you could make the case that this player is overhyped and the most likely reason is because he is black. Mind you, I think hyping a minority quarterback in a game where minority athletes are in the majority is silly on the surface.

 

[Renfield]

Tiger? Really? Think it might have anything to do with his being a child prodigy? What about his winning four masters in a row - never done before?

I guess if it had been a white player those commie simp liberals in the media would have just ignored it.

 

[corplinx]

Tiger? Really? Think it might have anything to do with his being a child prodigy? What about his winning four masters in a row - never done before?

I guess if it had been a white player those commie simp liberals in the media would have just ignored it.

Tiger started his much publicized career with 4 masters already under his belt? Wow. No wonder they gave him so much coverage.

Yes, I do think that at the beginning there was a lot of curiousity coverage of Tiger because he was non-white. I can't prove it of course.

However, I might have picked a bad example. You could be right. However, do you disagree with the rest of my post?

 

[Renfield]

Tiger started his much publicized career with 4 masters already under his belt? Wow. No wonder they gave him so much coverage.

Yes, I do think that at the beginning there was a lot of curiousity coverage of Tiger because he was non-white. I can't prove it of course.

However, I might have picked a bad example. You could be right. However, do you disagree with the rest of my post?

You never specified that you were referring to the beginning of his career. Anyway, Tiger was a child prodigy. He appeared on national television when he was a kid, to display his incredible golf skills. In college, he was a phenom, and was expected to do big things once he hit the pros. Such players usually do get some media attention.

 

[Zep]

Rush Limbaugh sacked?

<h1>Good.</h1>

But don't stop there, folks. There's a whole bunch of other loudmouth kooks who should be treated the same way.

 

[Cain]

In this case, I think Rush is more lke Jimmy the Greek than Michael Savage.

Of course you do -- you're a moron.

You have to prove two things: 1) McNabb is over-rated 2) McNabb is over-rated because he's black. This reminds me of white racists I've encountered who claimed media bias in coverage of the Lakers and Celtics during the 80s. The media apparently loved the Lakers and wanted them to succeed because they were black.

I don't really blame Rush, though. He probably couldn't see the games very well with that big white sheet over his head. He's not a racist, either. He knows he needs big black guys to protect our white QBs from other big black guys. There's only a problem the moment a black dude becomes the leader. (I'm kidding, of course!! But am I kidding on the square?)

 

[richardm]

. Anyway, Tiger was a child prodigy. He appeared on national television when he was a kid, to display his incredible golf skills. In college, he was a phenom, and was expected to do big things once he hit the pros. Such players usually do get some media attention.

In the UK at least, and certainly among the non-golfing fraternity, I very much got the impression that he got so much attention at that first Masters because he was the first (or perhaps the first in a long while) black player to get to that position - in a way, he appeared to be the most famous person nobody had ever heard of.

I recall that Nike had an advert with a bunch of kids all saying "I am Tiger Woods", which was interesting because the significance of being Tiger Woods was wasted on most of us. I don't recall ever hearing of the man until that point. Now, of course, we all know him on merit.

 

[Tricky]

Maybe it's because he was on drugs?

 

[HarryKeogh]

i thought rush brought up a legitimate point and shouldnt have had to resign (please note i'm not a big sports fan or an admirer of rush)

the media handles race oddly.

tiger woods deserves recognition because he's the best player around today but it makes a better story because he's black (or part black at least) in a traditionally white man's game.

charles barkley once chided the media for presenting a better than average white player (forget the name) as the possible next big thing in basketball. barkley said "you'd love that, a great white hope"

how many times are we reminded that there hasn't been a white heavyweight champion in umpteen years?

when i was a kid i used to wonder why there werent many black catchers in baseball. good thing i didnt bring it up or i would have had to resign my position as lunchroom monitor.

the media and marketing machine love to show that chinese basketball player. sure, one of hte first things to go through our minds is "wow, he's tall" but before that we probably said "wow, he's chinese and that tall!"

i dont think rush did anything wrong. just brought up an interesting topic. the media loves to work the race angle into it's stories.

 

[Tricky]

Valid points, Harry, but it wasn't that Rush brought up the fact that McNabb was black that got him in trouble. It was that he insinuated that McNabb was getting preferential treatment or being overrated because of his race. Now perhaps there is an element of truth there, but if someone makes that contention, they had damn well better be ready to back it up with some facts, and I can't see where Rush did that.

And of course, the rules are different for commentators. I watch Charles Barkley when he does the NBA show and he is quite toned down from how he used to talk when he was a player. But Charles got a lot of grief over his career for his big mouth and had he been a commentator when he said "I hate white people", he would have been sacked too.

For my money, Steve McNair is slightly better than McNabb. That only goes to show that people of Scottish/Irish descent make better quarterbacks.

 

[Crossbow]

I do not know why anyone even bothers with Rush Limbaugh anymore.

Just let him ramble on his radio show and that way when he flops, it will be all his fault and no one else will have to deal with the down wash.

 

[Tricky]

I do not know why anyone even bothers with Rush Limbaugh anymore.

Just let him ramble on his radio show and that way when he flops, it will be all his fault and no one else will have to deal with the down wash.

I bother with him because he is still a powerful symbol of the radical right. I know a number of people who still hang on his every word, and will defend him vociferously in this latest gaffe. I bother with him because it is not enough to let the voices of hate simply fade to background. I want them discredited.

Just as I cheered when Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker were shown to be smarmy hypocrites, I cheer when Rush Limbaugh is hoist by his own foul petard. (I know that is not a pretty image )

 

[Cain]

It's possible to excuse such a remark from other commentators, but Rush has a history:

As a young broadcaster in the 1970s, Limbaugh once told a black caller: "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back." A decade ago, after becoming nationally syndicated, he mused on the air: "Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?"

In 1992, on his now-defunct TV show, Limbaugh expressed his ire when Spike Lee urged that black schoolchildren get off from school to see his film Malcolm X: "Spike, if you're going to do that, let's complete the education experience. You should tell them that they should loot the theater, and then blow it up on their way out."

In a similar vein, here is Limbaugh's mocking take on the NAACP, a group with a ninety-year commitment to nonviolence: "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."

When Carol Moseley-Braun (D-IL) was in the U.S. Senate, the first black woman ever elected to that body, Limbaugh would play the "Movin' On Up" theme song from TV's "Jeffersons" when he mentioned her. Limbaugh sometimes still uses mock dialect -- substituting "ax" for "ask"-- when discussing black leaders.

Such quotes and antics -- many compiled by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) for our 1995 book -- offer a whiff of Limbaugh's racial sensibility. So does his claim that racism in America "is fueled primarily by the rantings and ravings" of people like Jesse Jackson. Or his ugly reference two years ago to the father of Madonna's first child, a Latino, as "a gang-member type guy" -- an individual with no gang background.

http://www.fair.org/articles/limbaugh-color.html

 

[Evolver]

Apparently it's okay to be a racist on right-wing whacko talk radio, but not on a sports show.

 

[corplinx]

Of course you do -- you're a moron.

I don't really blame Rush, though. He probably couldn't see the games very well with that big white sheet over his head.

I am sure that if I am a moron, that it took one to know it. Thanks Cain for degrading the thread with ad hominem.

 

[Tricky]

Apparently it's okay to be a racist on right-wing whacko talk radio, but not on a sports show.

Of course. The employer decides what image they want to project. ESPN found out that Limbaugh's image was not the one they wanted associated with their station. I tried to warn them.

 

[Blue Monk]

I would expect most any knowledgeable commentator in the sports field to at one time or hold a slightly different view than the pack at large concerning any individuals ability.

If Rush was in disagreement with the consensus over the abilities of a white player would he attribute this to any sort of 'group think' or would he rightly recognize this as merely a difference of opinion?

The fact is that Rush in one fell swoop dismisses any possibility that other commentators may actually be able to think for themselves and simply hold a different opinion than he does about a specific player.

When faced with a situation where he is in disagreement with others over a black player, Rush assumes, with no factual basis whatsoever to back it up, that the players race is a factor.

The reasoning behind each persons opinion on this matter are no doubt as wide and varied as the people themselves and the only person we know for a fact that has factored the players race into the equation, by his own statements, is Rush.

 

[Upchurch]

My fiancee was really upset about this. Not because he got in trouble but because he got in trouble over a race issue and not over all the sexist cr@p he's spewed over the years.

 

[Tricky]

My fiancee was really upset about this. Not because he got in trouble but because he got in trouble over a race issue and not over all the sexist cr@p he's spewed over the years.

Just remind her that they finally nabbed Al Capone for income tax evasion.

 

[Tricky]

Oh, here's a great quote from Limbaugh on his syndicated talk show:

"All this has become the tempest that it is because I must have been right about something," Limbaugh said. "If I wasn't right, there wouldn't be this cacophony of outrage that has sprung up in the sports writer community."

So having people outraged by something you say is the measure of how right you are? I guess Al Sharpton must be right about everything then.