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Are You Ready For Some Football?

It looks like Rush Limbaugh won’t be part owner of the Saint Louis Rams. His failure reminds me of his short-lived career as a spokesperson for Florida Orange Juice in 1994. I remember seeing footage of dittoheads wading through angry feminist protesters to purchase orange juice by the case. Not surprisingly, the orange juice mandarins […]

It looks like Rush Limbaugh won’t be part owner of the Saint Louis Rams. His failure reminds me of his short-lived career as a spokesperson for Florida Orange Juice in 1994. I remember seeing footage of dittoheads wading through angry feminist protesters to purchase orange juice by the case. Not surprisingly, the orange juice mandarins didn’t like the controversy and eventually dropped Limbaugh as a spokesman.

The lesson for Limbaugh from the orange juice flap, his brief career as ESPN commentator and his apparently failed bid to become a part owner in the NFL; is that he should stay inside the bubble. In the rightwing bubble, nobody is bigger than Limbaugh, but on the outside he is a mere mortal. Media Matters has an extensive list of Limbaugh comments that they find objectionable. I wouldn’t want Media Matters to define the parameters of acceptable debate, but the worst of Limbaugh’s statements are offensive. I agree with Rod Dreher that Limbaugh was “deliberately trying to whip up racial fear and loathing of the president” with his comment about “Obama’s America.” But I assume he was indulging in innocuous sarcasm when he said that Like Obama, “God does not have a birth certificate either.”

I scarcely blame the NFL for not wanting to devote all of their public relations to defending and contextualizing the ravings of one of its part-owners on an almost daily basis. And that is what they would have to do if Limbaugh was involved.

Glenn Reynolds absurdly claimed that “this whole NFL thing is a Limbaugh-set trap for the press and Democratic pols, and it’s working . . . .” No, this “NFL thing” was an attempt by a very wealthy man who loves pro football to become an owner and perhaps, one day, to slip a super bowl ring on one of his pudgy fingers. And its not working . . .

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