When Chickens Roost: Why Rush was Flushed

Even in Rush Limbaugh’s loneliest grade-school dreams, the ones he dreamt munching pork rinds while waiting in vain to play during recess, he probably never imagined the coverage in the nation’s sports sections he got last week.
Limbaugh ignited a sporting world inferno by wheezing on ESPN’s NFL pre-game show that Eagles QB Donovan McNabb is “overrated” because of the “media’s social concern” to see a successful black quarterback.
Before you could say “big fat idiot” three times, Limbaugh was in the eye of a media hurricane. Never one to defend his rancid ideas publicly, Limbaugh refused an opportunity to respond on ESPN, and chose instead to play martyr and resign. I don’t want to say Rush is a coward, but he would sooner sing “We Shall Overcome” in a pink thong than engage in a public debate outside the friendly confederate confines of right-wing talk radio.
Now Presidential candidates from General Wesley Clark to Joe Lieberman, and their op-ed columnists, are rushing to harpoon Rush. For some of these hollow critics, skewering Limbaugh for this is like getting Capone for tax evasion. No one in power said a peep when Limbaugh told an African-American caller to “shut up and get the bone out of your nose”, or when he once asked, “Why does every criminal composite photo look like Jesse Jackson?”
I heard one anti-Rush radio caller, angry as hell that it took a QB controversy to call out Limbaugh. “We’ve got black folk in jail, in the army because they can’t get a job, with HIV, and no one gets mad about that,” he shouted into the call-in show, “but you insult a quarterback and all of a sudden it’s Selma!”
But the outcry over Rush, even for this relative misdemeanor was quite welcome. When people like him are allowed to spew it gives all bigots license to scurry from the shadows.
Reverend Pat Robertson of the 700 club said, “There is, without question, an incredible effort on the part of the media to elevate these minorities into positions of prominence, at least if nothing else in fictional stories. You look at Morgan Freeman who is a tremendous actor. He started off playing a chauffer in Driving Miss Daisy and then they elevated him to head of the CIA and then they elevated him to President and in his last role they made him God. I just wonder, isn’t Rush Limbaugh right to question the fact, is he that good an actor or not? And was there a preference given? The same thing with the quarterback, did they give him a break?”
The good Reverend doesn’t get it. Rush did more than insult a quarterback. He applied his apartheid view of the world to the NFL, using McNabb to take a bite at affirmative action, and raise the question about whether the new wave of Black quarterbacks are just a creation of political correct media hype.
Columnist E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post thinks this ticked everyone off because people don’t want politics in their sports.
Dionne argued in the October 3, 2003 issue of the Post, “Most of us who love sports want to forget about politics when we watch games. Sports, like so many other voluntary activities, creates connections across political lines. All Americans who are rooting for the Red Sox in the playoffs are my friends this month, no matter what their ideology.”
Dionne believes that people love sports precisely because it is divorced from politics. But Dionne is, as per his custom, dead wrong. Of course, you don’t have to believe sports is political-just as you don’t have to believe, as the saying goes, in gravity to fall out of an airplane, and not just because of the national anthem.
In an era where professional football stadiums are shamelessly spun as community development programs, siphoning off millions of dollars in public money into commercial enterprise while the public school budget is cut—one can hardly say that sports exists in a separate world from politics.
But what Dionne, and on another level, Rush, don’t get that in sports we see our own dreams and aspirations played out in dynamic Technicolor. Politics are remote and alien to the vast majority of people. But the playing field is where we can project our every thought, fear, and hope. We want to believe fiercely that it is the one place where ability alone is how we are judged. If you can play, you will play no matter your color. This is why boxers like Joe Louis and the great Ali, Olympic stars like Tommy Smith and John Carlos, tennis players like Billie Jean King and the Williams’ sisters, and even golf’s Tiger Woods (although he would never want the title) are viewed consciously or not as political beings—carriers of the dream that all doors are open to all people.
The job of NFL QB has been the final athletic frontier for African-Americans. This year, ten black quarterbacks started NFL games out of 32 teams.
That is an all-time high. The racist stereotype has always been that African-Americans just aren’t “smart enough” to play quarterback. And if they did, they would be “running and athletic” as opposed to the “thinking” variety. Randall Cunningham, when he was drafted by the Eagles in 1984, was asked by a reporter: “What makes you think you are smart enough to read NFL Defenses?” Doug Williams was asked “How long have you been a black quarterback?” before the 1988 Super Bowl.
This stereotype has only been eroded recently with the play of QBs McNabb, Michael Vick, Daunte Culpepper and the tough-as-nails Steve McNair.
When Rush attempted to resuscitate the old minstrel song, he stepped on the third rail of our collective illusions. He ignited fury because he reminded people that open doors could always be shut.
But the unholy hypocrites like Limbaugh and Robertson, in my view, are barreling toward a golden age of comeuppance. People in power should take heed: if you spit on people’s dreams, you will be flushed just like Rush.

Dave Zirin is the author of the book: "Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports" (Haymarket). You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by going to dave@edgeofsports.com.

Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com