A Few Thoughts on Rush Limbaugh and Football

A lot of people are up in arms about Rush Limbaugh’s failed attempt to acquire an ownership interest in the St. Louis Rams of t he National Football League. Liberals are happy because Limbaugh was denied another toy and because it appeared that his chickens were finally coming home to roost. Conservatives are appalled because in this snub they see a man being denied his free speech rights and the blame the PC/Liberal Industrial Complex and issue dire warnings about how “first they came for the conservatives” and that all our civil rights are at risk. Not only are conservatives making this argument, but sportswriters and commentators without any really visible political ideology are saying the same thing. They say stuff like “In America, a man should be able to buy a team if he can afford it,” and “you have players like Mike Vick and Leonard Little commit heinous crimes and they’re in the league, but Rush Limbaugh is being given the bum’s rush.”

Well, I hope you will excuse me for not shedding a tear for the trampling of Rush Limbaugh. First of all, I think it bears a mention that the Constitution of the United States only guarantees that the State shall enact no law prohibiting freedom of speech. The Constitution does NOT mention the National Football League. You can look it up, but tale my word for it. I just double-checked and it doesn’t say anything about football or even, really, sports. All it says is that the “State” can’t abridge Rush’s freedom of speech. I am hard pressed to see where the NFL equals the “state.” Yes, I know that the NFL (through its franchises) gets plenty of public support through publicly-built stadiums, tax breaks and all sorts of other methods. But at no point did the Congress, the Supreme Court, the President or any legislative or political body tell Limbaugh he couldn’t own a piece of the team. My conservative friends like to argue that government shouldn’t meddle in private business enterprises and it certainly appears that is what happened here.

And while it is certainly possible, indeed likely, that the NFL did some behind-the-scenes wrangling to have Limbaugh removed, it should be noted that Limbaugh was kicked out of the ownership group that had hoped to buy the team, NOT, at least technically speaking, by the NFL. Dave Checketts, the would-be managing general partner of the ownership group (Checketts would be referred to as the “owner” of the team) is the one who took Limbaugh out of the ownership group. Again, I am not so naïve as to think that Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL didn’t have some role in all of this. It could have been a subtle hint to Checketts that the league sure would look on Checketts’ bid more favorably if it didn’t have such a polarizing figure in it and it could have even been more blatant. But the fact is, if Limbaugh is looking for the “person who did this to him,” he needs to start with Checketts and quit blaming liberals and the “drive-by” media.

The weird thing about all of this is that the Republican Party has always billed itself as the party of personal responsibility. They don’t want to hear excuses from people who might be served by affirmative action; their problems are theirs to deal with and they should just quit whining and deal with them. But now that Rush has to sleep in the bed he’s spent a generation making, the Right is unifying to blame anyone they can find except Rush himself.

Look, the NFL is a business. And it’s a business owned, largely, by conservatives. Rush Limbaugh is, in many cases, one of them. A rich white dude who wants lower taxes, smaller government and to be King of All He Surveys. Which is certainly his right. But if THOSE GUYS are trying to keep Rush out, how in the world is it the fault of liberals? Please explain that to me. Is it the fault of liberals because they can’t stand to have Rush speak his mind, as I have heard posited by some conservatives? They just want to shut him up, is that it? But all the “liberals” are doing is exercising THEIR OWN rights to free speech. Players have said that they would never sign with a team owned by Limbaugh. Isn’t that their right? Not only to refuse to sign with a team owned by Limbaugh but to also state that publicly? So what we have is Limbaugh, using MY AIRWAVES (please remember, in the United State, airwaves are public property and are only licensed to broadcasters, not sold) to spout his rhetoric, but as soon as players start giving their opinions about the man as a prospective owner, he is being shouted down by a bunch of angry liberals? Is the Right really saying that Rush has the right to say everything he has ever said but that as soon as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson start weighing in with their own opinions, it somehow becomes a First Amendment issue?

And make no mistake, Limbaugh is a polarizing figure. I won’t bother reciting any of the litany of his racially/homophobically/misogynistically-tinged comments here. There are better sources for all of that (I recommend Media Matters). But let’s agree, shall we, that Limbaugh has said and done a lot of things people find bigoted, sexist or otherwise offensive. And it doesn’t matter if Limbaugh actually said any of the things in question. It doesn’t matter if in his heart of hearts he is the biggest racist on the face of the planet or if his heart is secretly a United Colors of Benetton ad made flesh. The fact is that people BELIEVE he is a racist and all the other things. If people harbor hat belief about Limbaugh, why on Earth would the NFL agree to let him be a public face of their organization? It would make no sense for them to allow that. For that reason, I think that the decision to keep Limbaugh out is a strictly business-based one. Clearly, right or wrong, the NFL has made a judgment that Michael Vick, even with his convictions stemming from his dog fighting ring, is good for business and someone made an equally cold-blooded calculation that Limbaugh is bad for it. How is this even arguable?

And now I want to get to the nut of all of this talk of free speech and how it’s being denied to Limbaugh. Never mind what I said earlier about how the only restraints made on Limbaugh’s right to speak his mind were placed on him by Dave Checketts and/or the NFL. Because it’s clear that what Limbaugh and al his supporters on the right want isn’t “free speech.” They want “consequence-free free speech.” They want Limbaugh to be able to say whatever he wants, no matter how offensive, and not have anyone take umbrage. I’m a huge civil libertarian and while I am the first one to admit that the Constitution doesn’t give me the right to not be offended, I actually DO have the right to be offended and to state what it is that offends me and what I will do if the offensive behavior continues. The right wing and guys like Bill O’Reilly have made great use of the boycott of people who say/do/sponsor that which they find objectionable and I’d like someone to explain to me the difference between THEM doing it and a player in the NFL doing it. And that’s all this is, really, is people threatening to boycott a business if they offer to “employ” someone they deem offensive. No one has told the NFL that they can’t let Limbaugh buy the team but they have said that if Limbaugh buys the team, I won’t play for him (in the case of players) or I will not subsidize them (in the case of people who buy tickets).

This is right-wing hypocrisy at its most blatant. They cannot bear to think that Limbaugh should actually be held responsible for the things he has said. They don’t think that I should have the right to protest to Roger Goodell or Dave Checketts. They believe that Rush has the right to say what is on his mind and that anyone who dares to reject his thinking and who will vote with his wallet is merely another angry liberal who only wants to shout down another Conservative voice.

If I shed a tear for Limbaugh because of his self-made situation, you can bet that I stole it from a crocodile.