Even though this was reported by ProFootballTalk.com's Founder Mike Florio on October 15th, it bears a look back for me because I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh and Rush made some statements that assures the NFL will not come to call him again.
On his website, now housed by NBC Sports, Florio claims that Rush Limbaugh's headlong pursuit of being on an NFL ownership team was a P.R. stunt from the start because Forio claims Limbaugh knew they didn't like his politics.
He did it because he knew damn well what he was getting into, and he voluntarily went along for the ride because he knew it would bring him plenty of publicity -- and because it ultimately could be shoehorned into his broader message.
I really disagree, Mike.
Rush Limbaugh did it because he now has the cash to be at least a co-owner of an NFL team. His $400 million contract signed two years ago puts him in near-billionaire status.
Given his proven interest in the game of football, its logical that he would be interested in joining an NFL ownership group and confirmed that on his show.
Enter St. Louis Rams owner Dave Checketts, who was warned about the "possible media reaction". But while Rush knew that, he also was aware that it could go the other way and he would be part of the group. But that didn't happen. Checketts got rid of him after tremendous pressure from a number of people both inside and related with the NFL:
But it was Dave Checketts who pulled the trigger and let Rush go. The worst move Rush could have made was cementing himself from ever again being considered for an NFL ownership group by blasting Checketts and other potential new members of his ownership group on his radio show:
Reuters had a story that George Soros is one of Dave Checketts's partners. I did not know that. I wasn't told that. Mr. Checketts is not the primary partner here. The NFL has a rule that the primary owner has to have 30% equity in the team, and our group lost our 30% equity guy, and we had to scramble and find a new one, and I was told who it was, but now I'm wondering if it was Soros and I wasn't told. Soros and Checketts did, I have learned, partner together previously to try to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers. Mr. Soros, of course, is well known politically for his left-wing slants, his politics fit in perfectly, apparently, with what the National Football League is becoming. But I wonder if they know that he is also involved in the movement to legalize marijuana and how that will play as the owners decide whether or not he's fit.
What Rush proves is that if you don't include him, he'll try to wreck your NFL ownership plans by tossing dirty laundry on you and your crew. That's what he did to Checketts.
Limbaugh also continued his really racially ugly theme of basically saying the problem with America is that it's becoming too minority and too black. But he does his with code words and terms like "Obama's America" and setting up the view that there's a black power structure in the NFL Players Association that's against him, which is against an America that Rush implies is white.
The only group Rush gets support from with talk like that are White Supremacists, who have a really cockeyed view of America to such a degree that some are part of domestic terrorist groups.
Nice.
Rush Limbaugh can't get what he wants in owning an NFL franchise, or understand that most blacks and Latinos too feel that he does not like them, so he tried to torch everyone, including the NFL.
I think one day, perhaps when he's retired from broadcasting, Rush will gain a heart and realize how many people he's hurt. If he does, he should cry. What he's doing in trying to divide America is terrible and shameful.
Rush Limbaugh is one of America's biggest embarassments; not for the reason that he chastises the left, but because he is dishonest in his analysis. Moreover, at a time in which we could use a mending dialogue to confont the myriad of problems we face here and abroad, RUSH instead is taking the antique bookshelves off grandma's walls and torching them on the front lawn. In other words, he is destroying the very things that made us great, and doing it for public spectacle. Meanwhile, he himself is a spectacle, and is everything he despises in people: He lamented foreign autos, but drove a Benz until he was called out; he didn't vote until he was over 35. Limbaugh is an addict who illegally bought drugs and did no jail time; having been divorced three times and being a college dropout, he has failed the best-and-brightest and family values tests of the Right, and to top it off, he has been on welfare.
ReplyDeleteBut somehow blaming the black man and liberals (synonymous terms) have been the obvious catapult to stardom. And to most of his credits, he misrepresents fiction for fact; including a story last week which accused President Obama or tarnishing the US Constitution. When confronted with obvious lies, instead of apologizing, he fans the flames of division with more gas.
I for one would love to see the experiment work: to give Limbaugh an ownership position in football. In a sport with over 60% of the players being black men, that move would have effectly created an all-white football franchise, as no minority worth his skin could have played for Limbaugh.
Any minority player would have been pressured to go elsewhere, and it would have been fun to see a NFL Version of the Washington Generals (or pick your Utah team) come to towns to play...