And over at The Corner at the National Review, Kathryn Lopez unveils this gem:
Rush Limbaugh is not an acceptable sports investor because of his politics. How else to interpret the state of a sports world where Keith Olbermann can be on Sunday Night Football and Rush Limbaugh's hard-earned money can't be spent as a partial owner of a team in a sport he loves?First of all, it isn't his politics. The Center for Responsive Politics looked into where the political money from the National Football League (NFL) went to.
And many of the owners that made political donations were, well, conservative. Dean Spanos, the owner of the San Diego Chargers (I'm typing this from the San Diego airport, actually) was a bundler for John McCain.
Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, has given $199,000 to Republicans and $1,500 to Democrats.
Robert McNair, the owner of the Houston Texans, has given lots of money to Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, James Inhofe and Rudy Giuliani.
In other words, you can be conservative and be an owner; in fact, if you look at the percentages of money given to Republicans versus Democrats for most teams (the Rams, ironically, are one of the exceptions to this rule), Republicans got more money from NFL people than Democrats did.
As for the Keith Olbermann comment (he's the new bogeyman of the Right), did Lopez forget that he already had his chance to be an NFL commenter?
Limbaugh had to resign after this gem on ESPN's NFL Countdown pre-game show:
"I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well," Limbaugh said. "There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."McNabb, according to the Philadelphia Eagles website, "is the Eagles all time leader in pass attempts, completions, yards and TDs."
The previous three seasons, the Eagles had been to the playoffs three times and the conference finals twice in a row. In 2003, the year where Limbaugh made his idiotic statements, McNabb again led the Eagles to the conference finals. The next year, they made the Super Bowl.
In other words, not only was Limbaugh's "analysis" of McNabb wrong, it was just plain race-baiting for no reason.
So why can't Limbaugh be "partial owner of a team in a sport he loves" as Lopez asked?
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell put it best:
"I have said many times before that we are all held to a higher standard here," the commissioner continued. "I think divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about. I would not want to see those kind of comments from people who are in a responsible position within the NFL. No. Absolutely not."In other words, Rush Limbaugh is not the sort of person the NFL wants to associate itself with. It's as simple as that.
