Country's divisiveness rearing its ugly head in pro sports

Posted Monday, Oct. 19, 2009 Comments   (0) Print Share Share Reprints
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Do you believe the NFL owners were unfair to Rush Limbaugh?

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By JENNIFER FLOYD ENGEL

jenfloyd@star-telegram.com

engel Mega dittos, Rush.

I am no rank-and-file Dittohead, just FYI, which is The Rush Limbaugh Show’s version of a P-1. But the conservative talk-show host was dead-on right when he wrote "this spectacle is bigger than I am" about all of the angst, vitriol and outright fabrications deployed to derail his minority ownership of the St. Louis Rams.

We are talking about owning a sports team, right? Not leader of the free world, or pastor, or teacher? I thought so.

So this fake outrage, that somehow a person needs to be controversy free, PC and politically moderate to be able to revenue share with other rich, white, politically like-minded males would be amusing if it wasn’t so transparent, partisan and pathetic.

Do not be fooled. Rush and the Rams are just the latest battleground in the all-too-predictable and frighteningly ugly Right v. Left, Red State v. Blue State, Us v. Them divisiveness that bogs us down daily.

Once Limbaugh’s name was leaked, it was only a matter of time really, until the political ambulance chasers were on the scene calling for the NFL to just save the world from speech they do not agree with. And they only needed a single word to rally troops: racist.

It is an interesting question: Should saying things that many deem racist exempt you from owning a sports franchise? The problem is it requires across-the-board adherence and who wants to be in charge of polling every major sports owner on his views on affirmative action and a public option?

Or are we saying: It is only racist if it is said aloud?

My sports-columnizing brethren did not care, quickly deriding him as a racist and a bigot with "magic" quotes purportedly by Limbaugh himself to back this up. Many wrote and said that Limbaugh had praised slavery and the man who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr.

Damning stuff. Stuff he should be verbally flogged for.

Except he did not say either of those things, or at least not that anybody heard or recorded. About the only place of note was Jack Huberman’s book 101 People Who Are Really Screwing Up America.

Disappointingly none of said sports columnists I read cited either quote as unattributed from a book with an obvious agenda. And afterward, once forced to admit both shocking quotes were unverified, the defense I read by many was, well he has said other inflammatory things so I assumed he said this, and he has said other bad things so mis-attributing quotes to him is really not the issue.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is the issue.

This is a journalistic no-no, this taking unverified quotes with no due diligence as to their accuracy. And we wonder why trust in us is eroding?

I do not agree with everything Limbaugh says, except for possibly fiscally. I have to balance my checkbook and pay my bills, so I’d appreciate if my government did likewise. But he ticks me off, too, painting all of us newspaper-ers with the broad brush of drive-by media.

This is who Limbaugh is. He is controversial and conservative, and black NFL players had best take a number. The line of people he has offended is long, with women and gays and Muslims and Hispanics and journalists and really everybody who does not share his take on the Republic taking a turn in his view finder. It has earned him a lot of money.

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