The plight of Rush Limbaugh, part I
October 07, 2003 ~ 12:09 a.m.
I was asked by grimm0826 what I thought about the imbroglio over Rush Limbaugh. I think, leave the man alone.
The conservative talk-show host, who is no stranger to histrionic liberal-induced controversy, got in hot water over comments he made about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, theorizing on-air during an ESPN broadcast that the NFL football star�s status was overrated by the media simply because he�s black.
This caused a firestorm of outrage, mostly on the Left, with Howard Dean and other Democratic candidates demanding that ESPN fire the commentator. Limbaugh himself says that it was two full days before anybody actually caught on to what he said and twisted his words just to cause a sensation. I can believe it.
So now, in Limbaugh�s defense, I�ll throw my own hat into the ring: Imagine you are a young upstart journalist and that the paper you�re reporting for is the prestigious New York Times. Secondly, imagine that several pieces of your work were fictionalized or plagiarized. Then, finally, imagine that you are black.
Can you say free pass? Jayson Blair, the one such fake reporter, can.
Liberals leapt to his defense and showered him with sympathy. It must have something to do with the fact that Blair is a melanin-advantaged youth, and therefore is advantaged overall. Even considering the fact that the New York Times is the soppy liberal rag that it is, I would love to see a white reporter for the paper, with no less a progressive slant than Blair had, get accolades for trying his best to make it in the world of journalism, albeit without benefit of �affirmative action,� and to get a book deal to decry the right-wing conspiracy that cost him his job that would no doubt be written by a ghost writer.
In short, what am I saying? Jayson Blair was overrated�and adulated�by the media because he�s black. There you go�now lump me in the same group as Limbaugh. I don�t mind, because Limbaugh was right.
Let me give you the facts as I see them: Rush was not being racist�this is the same man who, in his book See, I Told You So, congratulated �80s basketball star Charles Barkley for his work ethic�he was simply offering a, pardon the pun, racy opinion on the state of American obsession with race and how the media promotes and feeds the obsession.
In a country where liberals cry racism at every opportunity and exploit it through divide-and-conquer politics, and paleo-cons foment racism by their insistence that we close the borders to all immigration and would prefer to solve the separatist tendency among blacks by encouraging the same behavior among whites, it�s no wonder that America has ended up as a nation that sweats racism through every one of its citizens� pores, whether latently or openly. This is the travesty that Rush was commenting on; but he chose a horrible choice of words with which to express it. I firmly believe it was not an attempt on his part to denounce McNabb purely because of his African-Americanness�it was a denunciation of the media�s manipulation of him. That disgusted Rush as it should disgust the rest of us. Let McNabb succeed on his own merits, but don�t hype him unnecessarily just because of his race. The media does this all the time and Rush simply had the guts to highlight it by using McNabb as an example.
I suggest we take a long, hard look at ourselves and how each one of us interprets and exploits racial thoughts and stereotypes before we, if you�ll again pardon the pun, rush to judgment.
I also understand that Mr. Limbaugh has a little drug problem as well. That I will discuss tomorrow.
� M.E.M.
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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
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