Rush Limbaugh's sportscasting career was done in by a media hungry for contoversy. Dan Nied says he has no one to blame but himself.
The facts of the Rush Limbaugh matter are this:
1) This country is too sensitive to issues of race. That tells me - more than Limbaugh’s remarks about Philadelphia Eagles' quarterback Donovan McNabb - that we live in an instinctively racist nation where issues of black and white are dealt with as carefully as someone would deal with walking on hot coals.
2) Limbaugh did exactly what ESPN wanted him to do and he was forced to resign.
3) Limbaugh does not think before he speaks.
We already knew the last two, but Rush did bring out the point of No. 1.
Limbaugh’s comments were not particularly racially insensitive. He actually made a point that can be argued and refuted. With all the fuss about minorities in sports, from NFL coaches to front office positions to, yes, quarterbacks. It might be accurate to say that Limbaugh was persecuted because a) he is Rush Limbaugh and b) because he was careless in choosing his battles.
Had Limbaugh said that the media was very desirous of a black coach succeeding, he might still have been banished from the sporting world but he would have been absolutely right, without any valid counter-argument. The point has been accurately made again and again that in the days of Steve McNair and Michael Vick, the black quarterback has already arrived and is in the middle stages of redefining the position. The pocket passer's days are numbred largely due to the role of quicker, more athletic black players at the position. Limbaugh’s argument was more suited for 1988, when Doug Williams was leading the Washington Redskins to the Super Bowl title, the first black quarterback to do so.
But why the outrage at such a harmless statement that wasn’t even directed at the black quarterback in question but at the media’s lionization of him? If Limbaugh’s ESPN Gameday cohort Michael Irvin, who is black, had said the same thing, nothing would have come of it.
But because Limbaugh is a hot air-filled conservative radio talk show host who was moonlighting as a sports anchor, becasue he isn’t known as the most sensitive guy on the planet and because he is - gasp - a rich white guy, the entire world lost its lunch over his remarks.
Are we so racially driven that the mere mention of race by a white guy sends us to the collective loony bin? In this case it seems that the media was looking for a juicy story. Who was Limbaugh to deny them a remark loosely based in race? With that remark Limbaugh gave them a chance to look at his pigment and controversial history, compare them with McNabb's pigment and clean cut history and create a race issue where none really should have existed.
Didn't ESPN hire him to ruffle some feathers?
In the end, perhaps Rush Limbaugh was done in by a media that was desirous of seeing him fail.