Rush Limbaugh Is A Big, Fat Idiot?
Emil Guillermo, Special to SF Gate Tuesday, October 7, 2003
Al Franken was wrong.
Rush Limbaugh isn't a big, fat idiot, as Franken's book title proclaimed a few years back. Certainly
not after Limbaugh lost more than 100 pounds.
But since a news item last week about the conservative icon, we know he is not color-blind.
We know that when Limbaugh sees Donovan McNabb, he doesn't see a great NFL quarterback. He sees a
black man.
And, as if being a bigot is not enough, in the tabloids we learn from Limbaugh's alleged former drug
peddler that in Limbaugh's more desperate moments, he apparently liked the opium derivative
OxyContin so much, he called the pills his "blue babies."
These revelations mean that the Darling of Dittoheads everywhere could be a racist, a dope addict or
both. Does it seem as if some kind of cosmic justice is at work here?
Rush the Racist?
In case you hadn't heard, Limbaugh, already making $30 million from his three-hour daily radio show,
had been moonlighting as a football analyst for ESPN's "Sunday NFL Countdown."
He was forced to resign last week.
On Sept. 28, a panel discussion on the show featured ex-players Michael Ervin, Steve Young and Tom
Jackson and sportscaster Chris Berman. The topic was Donovan McNabb's poor start this season as
quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.
Limbaugh, hired by ESPN this year to jack up the ratings (which he did) and mix it up with the boys
in the studio (which he tried to do), did what he does best. He polarized the issue. It's how he
gets 20 million listeners to tune in to his radio show.
So, when the ex-jocks went soft on McNabb, shock jock Limbaugh went for the hot button.
"I think the sum total of what you're saying is that Donovan McNabb is regressing and going
backwards," said Limbaugh. "And I'm sorry to say this: I don't think he's been that good from
the get-go."
I hate it when people use the term get-go.
But that's not the hanging offense. If Limbaugh stopped there, that would have been fine. But
he didn't.
"I think what we've had here is a little social concern from the NFL," he continued. "I think the
media has been very desirous of a black quarterback to do well. They're interested in seeing black
quarterbacks and black coaches doing well. I thing there's a little hope invested in McNabb, and he
got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he really didn't deserve."
Why was it relevant to bring in race?
In a week in which the league's two top-rated quarterbacks were Steve McNair and Daunte Culpepper,
both African Americans, bringing up an old saw about the supposed inferiority of blacks to play a
skilled position like quarterback in the NFL was clearly gratuitous.
The ex-jocks knew that in football terms.
"Somebody went to those Pro Bowls," Tom Jackson, an African American, said, referring to McNabb's
all-star credentials and putting the subject back on his ability, not his skin color.
"I think he got a lot of credit from the defensive side of the ball, winning games for this
team," Limbaugh retorted. (That was Limbaugh's main point, but it was obscured when Limbaugh
mentioned race).
Steve Young jumped in but didn't go after Rush. He defended McNabb, saying, "When [Philadelphia] is
winning, nobody makes more plays than Donovan McNabb."
I'm sure everybody at ESPN thought it was a spirited discussion. After all, that's what they wanted
when they hired Rush.
Until the calls of protest came in.
And then a surprising thing happened: Limbaugh went out with a whimper. He resigned. He didn't fight
back. He made a weak statement in response, saying he was just offering his opinion, and that his
comments were "directed at the media and not racially motivated."
Ah, it's that biased liberal media that wanted to prop up McNabb. The same liberal media that
supports Limbaugh's $30 million dollar-a-year paycheck.
That's some liberal media -- which, incidentally, gladly accepted Limbaugh's resignation.
Frankly, I'm surprised most commentators were willing to give Limbaugh a pass after his statement,
which wasn't exactly an apology.
But McNabb wasn't letting Limbaugh get away with it.
"I thought we were through with that," McNabb said at a press conference last week, referring to the
historical discussion of whether blacks can excel as quarterbacks. "I'm sure that everyone else has
thought about
it. Or it's on their mind. I'm sure that he's not the only one who feels that way."
He's probably not, and that's the real problem.
Rush Limbaugh has done more to make racist and intolerant views mainstream than anyone else I
can think of.
When he "says what people think" on the 600-plus radio stations throughout the country, most of them
owned by major media conglomerates, that air his program, Limbaugh legitimizes sentiments that some
people would be too afraid to express openly -- until they hear it somewhere else first.
When Limbaugh says it, Dittoheads are programmed. Suddenly, it's OK to diss people of color.
Immigrants. The undocumented. "Femi-Nazis." Animal rights wackos. Tree huggers.
So I'm sure, when some people heard what Limbaugh said on ESPN, it may not have seemed so egregious
compared to the sentiments on his radio show, or those replicated on other right-wing programs.
The sentiments expressed about McNabb seemed so commonplace, most of us were no longer shocked. It
was Rush Lite.
Rush the Drug Addict?
But I must admit I was shocked to read the details of Limbaugh's purported drug addiction and his
role in a Florida drug investigation, as reported in The National Enquirer and confirmed by major
news organizations.
The news reports spoke of Limbaugh buying as many as 4,350 pills -- all of them opium
derivatives such as Lorcet, hydrocodone and OxyContin, which have the same effect as morphine,
in a 47-day period.
Last week, Limbaugh told his radio audience, "Just trust me."
But I'm wondering when we'll see the reenactments show up on Fox News of Limbaugh driving to a
Denny's parking lot in West Palm Beach, where reports said he bought drugs from his ex-housekeeper,
Wilma Cline.
She said he'd lower the window of his Mercedes and she'd hand him a cigar box full of pills. "He'd
take it and hand me his cigar box full of money," Cline told the Enquirer. "'Here's the cabbage,'
he'd say. Then he'd drive off."
Is this just the GOP version of the '80s T-shirt message, "Cocaine is God's way of saying you make
too much money"?
Believe me, I'm trying to summon the same compassion for Rush that he's shown in the past for drug
addicts, not to mention the homeless, welfare recipients, people of color, immigrants, etc.
But I admit it's tough.
After hearing Limbaugh belittle some groups of people, especially the drug dependent, for so many
years, there's a sweetness in reading about his alleged gargantuan drug addiction.
After listening to him mock black speech by saying, "What you axe me?" it's somehow satisfying to
see him face up to charges of racism with a wimpy resignation note to ESPN. Perhaps the appeal is
the same stuff that makes us revel in the Martha Stewart/Ken Lay/Enron stories. There's something oh
so satisfying about bloated icons that go pop, then fall with a nice thud.
When that icon is such a demagogue as Limbaugh is, there is a delicious sense of cosmic justice when
the guy who claimed to have "talent on loan from God" is now suddenly found to be in default.
