Can't you see him standing on the steps of a school with an axe-handle 50 years ago? I bet someone in his immediate family did. Like someone pointed out the other day, the part of the state he is from is geographically in Missouri, but culturally it's in Mississippi. Or so I've heard.

I listened to a snippet of El Rushbo yesterday, fulminating/whining about his shabby-and totally undeserved- treatment at the hands of, well, everybody.

And my thought- hardly an original one- was: When you're in a hole, stop digging. . .

You didn't even mention the reason he got tossed from ESPN a couple of years ago when he said the only reason McNabb was getting respect as a top quarterback was because of his race. This is not about politics, do you think NFL owners are liberals? Please. He is and always be a racist. He has made a living off the idea of the down-trodden white male suffering the ills of feminism and affirmative action.

For years, this guy and his buddies have claimed that private organizations should get to exclude anyone they want for any reason they like.

And, of course, that the free market takes care of weeding out bad ideas/money losers.

Well, this private club decided to exclude him, correctly concluding that his blatant racism would destroy their profits.

Hoisted by your own petard much?

Now let's see... what would Jesus say about all this? Ahh... here we go: "What thou soweth, thou shall reapeth"

Now PISS OFF!

Limpballs, just another in a LONG LINE of REPUGLICAN HYPOCRITES...it only HURTS when it happens to them! BOO HOO...this man is pure nasty and hateful in his speech and commentary towards all with whom he does not share beliefs...can dish it out...can't take it...TYPICAL...

Nobody puts baby in a corner.

Realist, don't blame Limbaugh's family for his racism. The family is well known and highly respected in Missouri. I have actually met some of them. They are decent, kind and loving people. Rush ran away from their values long ago. He is responsible for his own life and his own views. Don't let the Drugster off the hook by blaming his family. He doesn't deserve such a break.

The truth is Limbaugh only sees one color, green. He thinks his audience demands racist comments, so he gives them comments he thinks they want to hear. He knows its wrong, but its a living.

Multi-millionaires who make their money sitting on their ass spouting their opinions for 3 hours a day are an especially oppressed minority. No one really understands the pain and fear of living such an oppressed, degraded existence. They are right up their with sharecroppers, coal miners and migrant field workers.

I've listened to Limbaugh off-and-on since he went national in 1988, and his philosophy of life is: "Make a lot of money. If you don't, you're a loser." He doesn't care about God, or family or friends or even the country. He cares about himself. He's a modern-day Ebenezer Scrooge.

Thanks Ron Byers. I was operating on the "apple doesn't fall far from the tree" assumption, and I know better than to assume. Good point about such an assumption letting him off the hook, too. Thanks.

It's a travesty of justice!

Liberals deciding they won't work with conservatives!

They should be more like Monica Goodling and work with anybody, regardless of political philosophy.

Steve, you're not mean enough. Say it like this:

It's nice of this multi-millionaire junkie who beat doing jail time after a series of drug felonies to explain this to us.

Either Rush or his editor is slipping; otherwise how did this make it into his op/ed?:

Democratic Party supporter

Rush is upset that a lot of people who have never met him don't like him? Gee, I wonder if Rush has ever met Obama, Pelosi, etc?

Can he really be so oblivious? Here's a guy who has made a fortune by being controversial, and then doesn't understand why his controversial persona makes him anathema to the NFL. The public whining is exactly the kind of behavior that Rush would condemn and make fun of on his radio show. Isn't karma great?

Chris Matthews had it right on Maher last night. Sports is the only place in our society in recent decades where race is not discussed, is not an issue. Limbaugh spoke of it (McNabb) and made it an issue. If he's not a racist, he has a bigot form of Tourettes; can't control what he says. Scary for a guy who millions listen to.

Poor Rush, he's created a very successful (financially speaking) career by seeking noteriety and cultivating an audience of angry white guys and now he's complaining about his reputation.

Let's not forget that the NFL has a very large business partner in Fox-TV. If it really wants to take a stand against hate speech, it would not renew its contract with Fox. But I suspect that money talks.

The worst part about Limbaugh for me, besides the fact that he's a terminal asshole, is that every time he makes headlines defenders will say he's no worse than (fill in the blank). The blank gets filled with Olbermann, Maddow, etc.

I'd say it's a false equivalency but the wingnuts don't know what equivalency means.

A bunch of rich, mostly conservative white guys decided that they didn't want to answer for another rich, conservative white guy every time he said something like "[I]n Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering." Period.

This is an interesting wrinkle:

Rush: Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race?

How long before he supports salary caps as an owner? Or do you think he met football players should work under salary caps and also have several part time jobs after practice?

Jay-Z is a partner in a sports franchise (New Jersey Nets), and though he probably holds a lot of vaguely-antisocial views about race, crime, and punishment (though possibly not, the outlaw pose could be just that), he has the sense to keep those musings away from the basketball context. So you won't see him drawing attention to racial ironies, real and imagined, that arise in the discussion of sports in America.

E.g., The NBA and basketball press goes out of its way to promote white guys, because there are so few of them, but they usually don't live up to the expectations. Again, not said by Jay-Z, because that kind of talk is bad for business.

Would you bet against Rush making equal and opposite remarks, if he were a team owner? Obviously the NFL was unwilling to (and I think the McNabb remark, on a football program, probably hurt his chances more than the nastier but football-unrelated things he has said on his show).

So shutting someone out of the market for a football team is horrible repression, but shutting someone out of the health insurance market is just capitalism, baby.

Gotcha.

sb,

For me the worst part about Rush is that here is an extremely wealthy guy, who's entire fortune is completely dependent upon having the Federal Government guarantee that when he (or the network he works for) transmits signals on the airwaves, no one will interfere. Without that service his little schtick would be worth bupkiss. So he spends three hours a day whining that he doesn't get this federal service for free, he has to pay money to the government. In fact his main point seems to be that if only we didn't give any money at all to any poor people we could supply this to him for free. That's pathetic.

Limbaugh seems rather desperate to characterize himself as some kind of victim. It's a rather sad display.

Actually, victimhood is the heart of right wing mythology. That stupid little loudmouth moron in the back cubicle? The one who sounds like a donkey when he laughs at his own racist jokes there at the water cooler? The one whose career has already peaked the day he was hired? That one? Hey, it isn't because he's a born loser moron that you all laugh at him behind his back and put him down like you do - it's because you can't stand that he knows The Truth! So, just like his Lord and Savior Jeebus, he must be victimized and crucified for his knowledge.

That's been the right wing's thing forever - it explains to life's losers that they really aren't morons, that they're special, and that's why people try to hurt them and chase them home from school every day (even when they're 50).

Ron Byers said: "Rush ran away from their values long ago."

Well, perhaps not all, since every bio of him points out his political closeness with his father, who was/is a far right racist.

Rush's whining is standard right-wing practice. Conservatives always play the victim and act like the world is out to get them (it often seems like paranoia and whining is ingrained in their DNA). Even a few years ago, when they controlled everything in D.C., they still acted like victims of a vast left-wing conspiracy. Rush just does what they do naturally.

It's interesting that the WSJ thinks that denouncing and fighting racism is the "left's agenda." Shouldn't that be every decent person's agenda, including conservatives? Are they tacitly admitting that the right has no interest in embracing people of color?

First, Benan states: "Limbaugh then notes that several news outlets used a bogus quote to highlight his record of racism."

This statement is intentionally misleading. There were 2 statements - one praising Slavery and one praising the assassin of MLK - falsely attributed to Limbaugh. And they were used by scores of "news outlets," not "several."

Second, Benan references a series of statements actually made by Limbaugh, which are in turn falsely characterized in another Prospect article. But if these statements were as viscous as portrayed, it would not have been necessary for the smear artists to fabricate quotes which were in turn used by CNN, MSNBC, and radio stations and newspapers across the country.

Regarding Benan's pejorative "pity party." As Benan well knows, under current court precedent it's theoretically possible but virtually impossible to defame a public figure. Even trafficking in fabricated quotes from Wikipedia likely isn't sufficient. One of the justifications given for this state of affairs is that a public figure is in a position to defend himself. But when Limbaugh does just that, and is so bold as to expand on his view of the campaign against him, he's apparently not just defending his reputation - no, it's a "pity party."

Let Limbaugh whine. It's his right.

What bothers me most about his whole act regarding the Rams is his absolute inability to see market forces at work. Here's a guy who is a devoted capitalist, a multi-millionaire by dint of his own hard work over decades. He's carried on 600 or 800 radio stations. He should know how business works.

Rush was rejected by other millionaires because his involvement in the Rams would be bad for business. Period. Limbaugh has millions of fans who hang on his every word, but the majority of Americans have a highly negative view of the man. And it would be difficult to characterize how much black America loathes him.

Limbaugh may not have said the outrageous things about slavery and James Earl Ray but he's said plenty of other things over the years that are extraordinarily mean-spirited, ugly and divisive.

Words have consequences. Rush was flushed by his own rhetoric.

Payback's a bitch. (In this case, a delicious, long savored, wonderful bitch.)

. "Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made,"

LOL, classic Rush argumentative technique. PoInt to one false claim and use it as a cudgel to discredit a larger body of factual evidence. Dan Rather anyone?

So Rush doesn't like free speech and free market capitalism?

Whocudanode?

Mr. Limbaugh was not done in by the left. It was an NFL owner known as a devout and sincere Christian who first raised the alarm.

It's all ESPN's fault.

They should not have dismissed him for his Donovan comments, he just thought he was speaking the truth about the NFL desiring to see a black quarterback succeed.

Problem is, Rush just doesn't get it. Our society has evoled beyond his clan of cave bears and it's simply not okay to even joke about racism anymore, look at Don Imus.

Rush is a shock jock. Time for him to disappear up his own .......(has to get past the piles first...ouch!)

LOL, classic Rush argumentative technique. PoInt to one false claim and use it as a cudgel to discredit a larger body of factual evidence. Dan Rather anyone?

You're really going to defend forgery as a news gathering technique, and then get on a moral high horse about Limbaugh?

You don't have to think highly of Limbaugh to acknowledge that this "one false claim" about his support for slavery and James Earl Ray is no minor matter. Once the same technique is used against one of your poster-boys, I guarantee the screams will be loud and long and you'll resent being called whiny. Expedient ethics tend to have a nasty payback.

Sorry, Rush. Capitalism has spoken, and the NFL owners see you as a risk to their profit margins.

The free market has deemed you a loser. And aren't you the one who insists the free market is never wrong?

So many ironies ... where to start? The cry-baby victimhood. The rejection of the "head of the Republican Party" by a bunch of other Republicans. The words coming back to bite him in the ass. The power of unionized workers (well paid, but still) taking him down.

Just too much good stuff here to focus on any one aspect.

I'm going to have to go out this afternoon and get some more popcorn.

Vail Beach: Right you are.

Recall that even after he was declared innocent by a jury of his peers, the NFL nonetheless cut its ties with OJ in '94.

The same unfair rumor mongering has now claimed the reputation of yet another great American.

"...defend forgery as a news gathering technique..." Vail Beach @ 2:37 PM.

Don't read too well, do you?
Mr. Rather was the recipient of the forged document, not the producer of it. The furor that developed over that document being a forgery called a halt to any further investigation into GWB's being AWOL: if "A" if fake, then anything else connected to "A" is also false; very bad reasoning but it stopped unwanted (by Republicans) investigations into GWB's AWOL status.
Which was the aim all along.

The Rather incident with the purported forgery merely hid the real questions about the GwB;s year in Provence er I mean Alabama or wherever he was when he was supposed to be in Texas. Where was he?

Poor Rush, now he's in the same boat as George Soros? Good grief!

The poor man was unable to serve during the Vietnam war because he had a boil on butt. All's well that ends well. The boil, named Glenn, was eventually given his own show on Fox. Go figure.

And if he hasn't jumped on it already, how long before Rush starts making the case of reverse racism in the fact that the NFL let Michael Vick back in, but they won't let him in?